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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



THE 

CHURCH 



OF 



ST. BUNCO 



A DRASTIC TREATMENT OF A COPYRIGHTED 
RELIGION-UN-CHRISTIAN NON-SCIENCE 



BY 

GORDON CLARK 



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Bbbcy press 

PUBLISHERS 
114 
FIFTH AVENUE 

Xonfcon NEW YORK Montreal 



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THE I !«PARY OF 
Two Copies Received 

DEC. 10 1901 

JDOPVUIGHT ENTH* 

CLASS O/XXc no. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, iqoi, 

by 

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CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGB 

Preface , 7 

I. A Bird's-eye View of the Thing II 

II. The Origin of the " New Thought" 15 

III. Dr. Quimby's most Distinguished Patient 41 

IV. A Great " Metaphysical " Novel 59 

V. A Soft Set of Critics 74 

VI. " The Precious Volume " 78 

VII. " Key " to the Eddy Scripture, Science and 

Health 95 

VIII. " Christian Science " Organizing Forces 108 

IX. The One True " Mother Church " 120 

X. A Martyr to " Science " 131 

XI. Metaphysics 155 

XII. Further Analysis of the Universe 165 

XIII. A Special Look at Space and Time 180 

XIV. Creative Mind Further Probed 186 

XV. The Genesis of " Transcendental Ideas 193 

XVI. The Grand Result of Dissecting Phenomena. . . 196 

XVII. Some Sequences of Absolute Idealism 206 

XVIII. Various Schools of the "New Thought " 219 

XIX. An Advanced Healer of To-day , 232 

XX. Conclusion 248 



PREFACE. 

The purpose of this book is not to deny the 
power of mind over matter, or of the human 
mind over the human body, but to show that 
the foolish and pestilent thing termed " Chris- 
tian Science " is a leech fastened upon these 
great truths, mostly, if not wholly, to batten on 
them. 

There is no use of saying this to " Christian 
Scientists " themselves — an obedient chain- 
gang in hypnotic servitude. But people who 
are not already " in Science " (to use the shib- 
boleth of those who are), ought to be prompted 
not to get there. The best way in general, I 
think, is to show that even the historical and 
biographical claims at the base of the move- 
ment are false. If the personal veracity of the 
head of a church cannot be trusted, " divine 
revelations," " miracles " and " mental medi- 
cine," proceeding from such a source, will 
naturally be accepted only by the very soft, or 

7 



8 Preface. 

else by the very hard for solid considera- 
tions. 

Is there no sincerity, then, in " Christian 
Science " ? Of course there is. Even the " dis- 
coverer and founder " of it undoubtedly be- 
lieves certain of its asseverations. Mrs. Mary 
Baker Eddy must be credited, for instance, 
with the conviction that she has some knowl- 
edge of metaphysics " — a conviction that is 
nothing worse than a pitiable mistake, which is 
exploded here at some length. When, as a re- 
sult of this mistake, she teaches that matter is 
nothing — not even a condition of anything — 
only sincerity can account for such lunacy. Yet 
herein " Christian Science " has its whole ra- 
tional, or rather irrational, breath of life. 

Some " Christian Scientists " sincerely be- 
lieve in an equivalent for " black magic." As, 
in their view, " concentration of mind " can 
cure disease, they think it can also throw 
disease upon enemies, or upon backsliders from 
" science." It has been suggested even to the 
present writer that illness might be cast upon 
him if he antagonized " the true faith." Ac- 
cording to certain dissidents from " Chris- 
tian Science," " black magic," though with 



Preface. 9 

much talk of "chastening love" — (every crime 
of religious hypocrisy is always committed in 
the name of "love") — has been persistently 
tried on heretical wanderers. In the natural 
course of time some of them are dead ; but those 
whom I have met are not only living, they are 
comfortably fat. 

As " Christian Science " has to me no gen- 
uine basis, either in facts, science, theology, 
metaphysics or therapeutics, but is a menda- 
cious, contradictory, pretentious humbug, I do 
not hesitate to use such weapons, whether nar- 
ration, logic, or satire, as are adapted to punc- 
ture it. We hear that " Christian Science " has 
done good. So it has, in some instances, but 
only through means which it pretends to re- 
pudiate, and through the trustful ignorance of 
those who have been duped by it. We hear, 
also, that " Christian Scientists " are specially 
" educated and intelligent." I deny it. No one 
of them seems ever to have heard of the history 
of philosophy — a cemetery in which have long 
lain buried the most of " Mother " Eddy's " di- 
vine revelations," " original discoveries " and 
" absolute demonstrations." Her followers 
can doubtless read, or they would not be avail- 



io Preface. 

able as purchasers of her Science and Health; 
but, if they could think, they never would have 
read the book through. From beginning to 
end, it is simply a batch of self-contradictions 
and self-nullities. These are capped with the 
most impudent claim ever uttered on earth — 
the claim that the human mind in its natural 
state cannot comprehend the divine mind in- 
carnate in the author. If caustic is applied to 
such nonsense, there is no need of apology. 
The only doubt is that the malefaction is worth 
the burning. 

GC. 



THE CHURCH OF ST. BUNCO 



CHAPTER I. 
A bird's-eye view of the thing. 

The date of this writing is the year 1901. 

About a quarter of a century ago, Boston, the 
city of modified Puritans and keen business 
thrift, evolved a new religion. Modern Bos- 
ton, however, being nothing if not " scientific," 
the new religion tipped its wings with the new 
time, and soared aloft in the name of " Chris- 
tian Science." 

In a world not quite converted to this " sci- 
ence," facts sometimes fall behind assertions. 
But the sect of Christian Science now claims 
to number in its fold a million sheep. The 
" mother church," of course, is in Boston; but 
daughter churches of every age and size are 

budding and blooming throughout the earth. 

11 



12 The Church of St. Bunco. 

At headquarters Christian Science has its of- 
ficial weekly organ, its official monthly maga- 
zine, and its official publishing house. The 
cult has issued innumerable books, but spe- 
cially the multifarious editions of Science and 
Health, the chief work of the adored 
" mother " and " founder " of Christian Sci- 
ence,Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. As the latest 
edition of this sacred book is always the best, 
and as the holy author carefully recommends 
it as such to all the faithful- — whatever other 
editions they possess — its very high price, un- 
der copyright,* as compared with undivine 
books, has rendered it a magnificent source of 
income. Then, as the average fee for bless- 
ing a disciple of Christian Science with a dozen 
lessons in " metaphysics " and " healing " has 
been three hundred dollars,t a grateful provi- 
dence through long years, has not only pro- 
vided food and raiment for " Mother Eddy," 
but a rich abundance, too, of such worldly 
goods as should adorn and stimulate perfect 
piety, not excepting the whitest of diamonds, 

* From $3.18 to $6. 

f Mrs. Eddy's statement in her book, Retrospection 
and Introspection, p. 61. 



A Bird's-eye View of the Thing. 13 

as symbols of purity, for herself and the elect 
of her household. Why not ? Her devotees are 
strict adherents of Scripture — always as she 
interprets it for them — and she believes, for all 
the text will yield, that " the laborer is worthy 
of his hire." 

Now, apart from the name and the church of 
Christian Science, there are many people in 
Boston and its universal radiations — very in- 
telligent and honest people, too — who utterly 
discard Mrs. Eddy and her teachings, yet hold 
the general doctrine on which she speculates — 
the now well-known doctrine that mind gov- 
erns matter, and that the soul can cure the body 
of disease. The teaching of these people may 
simply be termed " mental healing," though 
they say also " mental science," sometimes 
"metaphysics" and comprehensively " the new 
thought." 

Of late much has been said and written 
against Christian Science ; but adverse criticism 
has proceeded mostly from physicians in the 
interest of their schools and theologians in the 
interest of their creeds. These good souls have 
taken Christian Science seriously, like the inno- 
cent followers of Mrs. Eddy herself. But as 



14 The Church of St. Bunco. 

soon as a general investigator touches the fad, 
especially the history of it, he sees that, what- 
ever its effects may have been — good, bad or 
indifferent — it began in false pretenses,* has 
been pushed for money, and is one of the most 
shallow humbugs that ever tricked an epoch in 
the cloak of religion, or reduced " meta- 
physics " to lunacy. Hence our title. The 
Church of St. Bunco is the name for the thing. 
" Christian Science," properly named, is simply 
t/n-Christian Non-Science. 

* For proof in detail see Chapters III. and IV. 



The Origin of the New Thought. 15 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ORIGIN OF THE NEW THOUGHT.* 

" Christian Science," " Mental Healing/' 
" Metaphysical Treatment of Disease," — where 
did these things come from, and how did they 
get here? The facts are peculiar; they are 
partly unpleasant ; they are sometimes amusing ; 
but they are not far to seek. 

In 1836, Charles Poyan, a Frenchman, in- 
troduced into the United States the practise 
of Mesmerism. In 1840 it was taken up, with 
great earnestness, by a Maine Yankee, named 
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He was a watch 
and clock maker, an inventor, and a natural re- 

* Our historical sources of information are referred to as 
we go along, but a good deal of it has come from access 
to original documents, and from living persons of the 
highest character who were long and intimately ac- 
quainted with the subject of our chapter. The names of 
some of these friends are given by permission. 



16 The Church of St. Bunco. 

former. In making his mesmeric experiments, 
he soon found an extraordinary subject of 
them in the person of a young man, Lucius 
Burkmar, with whom he traveled several years, 
giving, it is said, some of the most astonishing 
exhibitions of mesmerism and clairvoyance 
that had ever been known. As the substance 
of mesmerism, though under the newer name of 
hypnotism, has now been fully substantiated by 
the French Academy of Medicine, the highest 
authority in the world on such subjects, there 
seems to be no longer any reasonable question 
of its general claims. 

On taking up mesmerism in New England, 
Mr. Quimby had been very ill and given up 
by his physicians to die. By inquiring into his 
own condition through his clairvoyant subject, 
Lucius, and by the young man's laying-on of 
hands, Mr. Quimby, as he tells the story, re- 
covered immediately from a long-standing and 
dangerous malady. Partly as a result of this 
cure, but much more because his whole life 
shows him to have been a natural exemplar of 
" the good physician," he took to " healing the 
sick." He held no diploma from any college of 
medicine; but his work and his thousands of 



The Origin of the New Thought. 17 

patients inevitably conferred upon him the title 
of " Doctor." 

At first he merely co-operated with the reg- 
ular medical faculty, who sometimes called 
upon him to have his subject, Lucius, examine 
their patients. Being put into the mesmeric 
state, young Burkmar would describe the dis- 
ease, with the pains accompanying it, and 
would then go on and prescribe remedies, 
though he knew nothing about them. 

As a participant and student of this process, 
Dr. Quimby came, in a short time, to the con- 
clusion that the diagnosis of the clairvoyant 
was not necessarily the true one, but was taken 
from the belief of the patient, or his physician, 
or some other person, and was, therefore, an 
impression of incidental mind, rather than a 
statement of fact. Such results would not do 
for a man like Quimby; so he dismissed mes- 
merism — such practise of it at least as de- 
pended on anybody but himself and those on 
whom he directly operated. Meanwhile, ac- 
cording to the best of testimony, there was de- 
veloped in himself a faculty much more pe- 
culiar and effective than ordinary " mind-read- 
ing " and " second-sight." Gradually, too, he 



18 The Church of St. Bunco. 

formed an entirely new and original theory of 
disease. In 1857, in a Maine paper, the Ban- 
gor Jeffersonian, his faculty and his theory 
were described thus : 

" It is universally acknowledged that the 
mind is often the. cause of disease, but it has 
never been supposed to have an equal power in 
overcoming it. Quimby's theory is that the 
mind gives immediate form to the animal 
spirit, and that the animal spirit gives form to 
the body. . . . Therefore, his first course in 
the treatment of a patient is to sit down be- 
side him, and put himself en rapport with him, 
which he does without producing the mesmeric 
sleep. . . . With the spirit form Dr. Quimby 
converses and endeavors to win it away from 
its grief; and, when he has succeeded in doing 
so, it disappears, and reunites with the body. 
Thus is commenced the first step towards re- 
covery. . . . This union frequently lasts but a 
short time, when the spirit again appears, ex- 
hibiting some new phase of its troubles. With 
this he again contends until he overcomes it, 
when it disappears as before. Thus two shades 
of trouble have disappeared from the mind, and 
consequently from the animal spirit; and the 



The Origin of the New Thought. 19 

body has already commenced its efforts to come 
into a state in accordance with them." 

In an article written by Dr. Quimby him- 
self (in 1861), he explained his procedure in 
this way: 

" A patient comes to see Dr. Quimby. He 
renders himself absent to everything but the 
impression of the person's feelings. These are 
quickly daguerreotyped on him. They con- 
tain no intelligence, but shadow forth a reflec- 
tion of themselves which he looks at. This 
contains the disease as it appears to the patient. 
Being confident that it is the shadow of a false 
idea, he (Dr. Quimby) is not afraid of it. 
. . . Then his feelings in regard to the dis- 
ease, which are health and strength, are da- 
guerreotyped on the receptive plate of the pa- 
tient, which also throws forth a shadow. The 
patient, seeing this shadow of the disease in a 
new light, gains confidence. This change of 
feeling is daguerreotyped on the doctor again. 
This also throws forth a shadow, and he sees 
the change, and continues to treat it in the same 
way. So the patient's feelings sympathize 
with his, the shadow changes and grows dim, 
and finally disappears. The light takes its 



20 The Church of St. Bunco. 

place, and there is nothing left of the dis- 
ease." 

Dr. Quimby was not an educated man in the 
technical meaning of the term; but, through 
his experiments in mesmerism and his personal 
experiences, he was led directly to what in the 
history of philosophy is called " absolute ideal- 
ism." Until his own conclusions were fully 
reached, he knew nothing, from literature, 
even of Berkeley; but when Berkeley's writ- 
ings were unfolded to him, he at once said, in 
his plain, straightforward way, that they were 
true, and that he " agreed " with them. To 
him, the universe was mind, and all things were 
" ideas." Disease was an " idea," though he 
sometimes called it " matter," as being nega- 
tive mind, or that which " could receive im- 
pressions " and " be changed by them." Hence 
he said: 

"The idea (disease) is matter; and it de- 
composes, and throws off an odor that contains 
all the ideas of the person affected. This is 
true of every idea or thought. Now my odor 
comes in contact with this odor, and I, being 
well, have found out by twenty years' expe- 
rience that these odors affect me, and also that 
they contain the very identity of the patient 



The Origin of the New Thought. 21 

whom this odor surrounds. This called my 
attention to it ; and I found that it was as easy 
to tell the feelings or thoughts of a sick person 
as to detect the odor of spirits from that of 
tobacco. I at first thought I inhaled it, but 
at last found that my senses could he affected 
by it when my body was at a distance of many 
miles from the patient. This led to a new dis- 
covery; and I found that my senses were not 
in my body, but that my body was in my 
senses. My knowledge located my senses just 
according to my wisdom. If a man's knowl- 
edge is in matter, all there is of him is con- 
tained in matter. But, if his knowledge is in 
wisdom, then his senses and all there is of him 
are out of matter." 

In i860 Dr. Quimby used, in Portland and 
vicinity, a circular addressed " to the sick," 
some copies of which have been preserved, and 
from an original copy of which the following 
extracts are taken : 

" Dr. P. P. Quimby would respectfully an- 
nounce that he will attend to those wishing to 
consult him in regard to their health, and, as 
his practice is unlike all other medical practice, 
it is necessary to say that he gives no medi- 



22 The Church of St. Bunco. 

cine and makes no outward applications, but 
simply sits down by the patients, tells them 
their feelings, &c., then his explanation is the 
cure; and, if he succeeds in correcting their 
error, he changes the fluids of the system and 
establishes the truth, or health. The Truth is 
the Cure. This mode of treatment applies to 
all cases. If no explanation is given, no 
charge is made, for no effect is produced. 
... If patients feel pain they know it, and, 
if he describes their pain, he feels it. . . . 
A fter this it becomes his duty to prove to them 
the cause of their trouble. . . . This has been 
his mode of practice for the last seventeen 
years. For the past eight years he has given 
no medicines, nor made any outward applica- 
tions. . . . There are many who pretend to 
practice as he does; but when a person, while 
in a trance, claims any power from the spirits 
of the departed, and recommends any kind of 
medicine to be taken internally or applied ex- 
ternally, beware ! Believe them not, ' for by 
their fruits ye shall know them.' "* 

* This circular alone — furnished to the writer by Dr. 
Quimby's son — is complete proof as to origin of " mind- 
healing " in the United States. 



The Origin of the New Thought. 23 

In 1887 a short account of Dr. Quimby and 
his work was published in a pamphlet entitled 
The True History of Mental Science, by Ju- 
lius A. Dresser. Mr. Dresser had been a pa- 
tient and friend of Dr. Quimby, who had 
looked to him to cultivate and extend the 
Quimby system. But the immediate accom- 
plishment of that purpose had been prevented. 

In 1895 Mrs. Annetta Gertrude Dresser, the 
wife of Julius A. Dresser, and, like him, a 
patient and personal friend of Dr. Quimby, 
gave to the public a small but comprehensive 
volume, The Philosophy of Dr. P. P. Quim- 
by.* This excellent sketch of the man and his 
career contains part of an article upon him 
written by his son, Mr. George A. Quimby, for 
the New England Magazine of March, 1888, 
the article being followed, in Mrs. Dresser's 
book, by various newspaper notices and criti- 
cisms of Dr. Quimby, running from 1857 *° 
1863, then by reminiscences of him, an exposi- 
tion of his theories, and by selections from his 
manuscripts. 

* The reader is advised to consult the pamphlet and the 
book here specified, in connection with our chapter. 
(Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, Boston)— G. C. 



24 The Church of St. Bunco. 

The newspaper articles were mostly pre- 
pared by grateful patients whom Dr. Quimby 
had restored from sickness to health.* Among 
these patients were two daughters of Judge 
Ashur Waref of Portland, Maine, one of 
whom, Mrs. Sarah Ware Mackay, still lives 
to bless the good Doctor's memory. The Ware 
sisters became so deeply interested in Dr. 
Quimby' s thoughts and cures that they per- 
suaded him to write out his ideas and explain 
his practise. As he was exceedingly busy, his 
articles were rewritten by the two young la- 
dies or by Mr. George A. Quimby, and were 
then submitted to the Doctor for correction. 
His terminology was peculiar, and sometimes 
inadequate to his meaning; but due attention 
to his writings, with those of his friends, 
yields a clear conception of him. 

One thing will never be questioned by any 
honest and sensible person acquainted with the 
facts : Dr. Quimby's biographers — his son and 
his trusted friends, the Dressers — have told the 

* These press articles and notices have been examined 
by the writer, and are unmistakably genuine, as are the 
selections. 

t U. S. Court of Admiralty. Judge Ware was some- 
times spoken of as the leading citizen of Maine. 



The Origin of the New Thought. 25 

truth about him. The information they give 
fully sustains their general estimate. This 
estimate established, we know that Dr. Quim- 
by himself was absolutely sincere, and could be 
fully trusted just so far as he understood his 
own nature and what he was doing. But this 
is not to say that he was always right. It is 
not even to say that he was without the strong- 
est of prejudices, which may sometimes have 
misled him. He was too broad and high a 
soul to be opinionated in any narrow, selfish 
sense; but he would stand for a conviction till 
" the crack of doom." " The old gentleman," 
says one who knew him familiarly for many 
years, " would argue a sitting hen off her 
nest." 

Reference has been made to his ill-health 
when he began to study mesmerism. Physi- 
cians had told him that his " kidneys were par- 
tially consumed," and that he had " ulcers on 
his lungs." 

"On one occasion [he says], when I had 
my subject asleep, he told me that one [of my 
kidneys] was half consumed, and a piece three 
inches long had separated from it, and was 
only connected by a slender thread. This was 



26 The Church of St. Bunco. 

what I believed to be true; for it agreed with 
what the doctors told me, and with what I had 
suffered — for I had not been free from pain 
for years. My common sense told me that no 
medicine would ever cure the trouble, and 
therefore I must suffer till death relieved me. 
But I asked [my subject] if there was no 
remedy. He replied, ' Yes — I can put the 
piece on so it will grow, and you will get well/ 
. . . He placed his hands upon me, # and 
said he united the pieces so they would grow. 
The next day he said they had grown together ; 
and from that day I never experienced the 
least pain from them."* 

Dr. Quimby's personal veracity being ac- 
cepted by the present writer as unimpeachable, 
his word must be taken as perfectly good for 
this remarkable story, as he understood the 
matter. But the various inferences he drew 
from his case may be questioned, with no dis- 
advantage to his character. 

"I concluded" [said he], "that [the sub- 
ject] read my mind; and his ideas were so ab- 
surd that the disease vanished by the absurdity 
of the cure." 
* The True History of Mental Science, page 15. 



The Origin of the New Thought. 27 

It appears that this mesmeric subject, though 
he could be forced, under control, to prescribe 
anything in the mind of the operator, always 
did prescribe, if left to himself, some very sim- 
ple remedy. 

" When I mesmerized my subject/' says Dr. 
Quimby, " he would prescribe some little sim- 
ple herb that would do no harm or good of 
itself. In some cases this would cure the pa- 
tient. I also found that any medicine would 
cure certain cases if he ordered it. This led 
me to investigate the matter, and arrive at the 
stand that the cure is not in the medicine, but 
in the confidence of the doctor or medium." 

In his early invalid life, Dr. Quimby had 
been " filled," he tells us, with " calomel " and 
other " strong doses of allopathic poison." As 
we nead his description of Lucius and the 
" simple herbs," the thought arises that the 
mesmeric subject might have had some power 
or aid after all, that his good operator passed 
over too cavalierly, and that the " herbs " might 
have appeared more efficacious, if a reminis- 
cence of vigorous " blue pills," in which Dr. 
Quimby once had confidence, had not still 
dwelt on his tongue. It is certain that, since 



28 The Church of St. Bunco. 

his time, some very sensible persons believe 
they have been cured of so dire an affliction as 
cancer by so innocent a concoction as clover 
tea. 

Dr. Quimby, to use the language of his first 
biographer, Mr. Dresser, " progressed gradu- 
ally out of mesmerism, into a knowledge of the 
hidden powers of mind; and he soon found in 
man a principle, or a power, that was not of 
man himself, but was higher than man, and of 
which he could only be a medium. Its char- 
acter was goodness and intelligence; and its 
power was great. He also found that disease 
was nothing but an erroneous belief of mind. 
. . . On this discovery he founded a sys- 
tem of treating the sick, and founded a science 
of life. . . . His discovery was not made 
from the Bible, but from natural phenomena 
and searching investigation. . . . After the 
truth was discovered, he found his new views 
all portrayed and illustrated in Christ's teach- 
ings and works." 

Some of these claims were reaffirmed by Dr. 
Quimby himself, in a letter written in i860.* 

" You inquire [he says] if I have ever cured 
* Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, page 53~54- 



The Origin of the New Thought. 29 

any cases of chronic rheumatism. I answer, 
Yes; but . . . you cannot be saved by pin- 
ning your faith on another's sleeve. Every 
one must answer for his own sins or belief. 
Our beliefs are the cause of our misery, and 
our happiness or misery is what follows our 
belief. . . . You ask if my practice belongs 
to any known science. My answer is, No ; 
it belongs to a Wisdom that is above man 
as man. ... It was taught eighteen hundred 
years ago, and has never had a place in the 
heart of man since, but is in the world, and the 
world knows it not." 

In The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, we are 
told that 

" It was Dr. Quimby's chief aim to establish 
a science of life and happiness, which all could 
learn, and which should relieve humanity of 
sickness and misery." 

But after our various quotations, we can 
readily perceive, as his biographer maintains, 
that " by the word, ' science/ " he always 
meant " not what is commonly understood by 
that word, but something spiritual." By 
" science," in short, or what he sometimes 
called " Wisdom," Dr. Quimby meant simply 



30 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the principle of the universe, the presence, 
truth and power of God, at the foundation of 
the human soul. 

Dr. Quimby said, and his disciples have said 
after him, that he " never went into any 
trance," and was " a strong disbeliever in 
Spiritualism, as understood by that name." 
Pursuing this statement in detail, we find that 
his criticism of the subject consisted mostly in 
his denying the accuracy of information de- 
rived from clairvoyants and spirit-mediums. 
But, in the words of one of his most intimate 
friends, he considered our two states of physi- 
cal and spiritual life as " only a difference in 
dissolving views," and he believed that his own 
thought and senses existed, a part of the time, 
out of matter, or in " the scientific world."* 
He even affirmed, in connection with his view 
of disease as an impression of mind, that, 
transferring himself into the spiritual state of 
existence, he had cured his own parents, after 
death, of ailments which had not left them 
when they departed from their physical condi- 
tion. To this strange man, Dr. Quimby, the 

* Mrs. Sarah Ware Mackayl 



The Origin of the New Thought. 31 

world of matter and the world of spirit were so 
interblended as to be only two phases of the 
same thing, both of which he constantly expe- 
rienced. 

" What," he asks, " is this body that we 
see?" It is "a tenement for man to occupy 
when he pleases. But, as a man knows not 
himself, he reasons as though he were one 
of the fixtures of his house, or body. . . . 
What is the true defminion of death. " Death 
is the name of an idea. ... So the destruc- 
tion of an idea is death." Man " is dying 
and living all the time to error, till he dies 
the death of all his opinions and beliefs. 
Therefore to be free from death is to be alive 
in truth." In no other way than this, would 
Dr. Quimby even recognize such a fact as 
death. When he came to die himself, he said 
" I am perfectly willing for the change. . . . 
But I know that I shall be right here with you, 
just the same as I have always been. I do not 
dread the change any more than if I were go- 
ing on a trip to Philadelphia." 

Dr. Quimby, then, in his own way, certainly 
did believe, accept and avow what is commonly 



32 The Church of St. Bunco. 

understood as Spiritualism, but he repudiated 
its frequently doubtful accompaniments. 

" I know [said he] just how much reliance 
can be placed on a medium; for when in the 
mesmeric state, they are governed by the su- 
perstition and beliefs of the person they are 
in communication with. . . . The capacity 
of thought-reading is the common extent of 
mesmerism. Clairvoyance is very rare. . . . 
This state is of very short duration. They 
then come into that state where they are gov- 
erned by surrounding minds. All the mediums 
of this day reason about medicine as much 
as the regular physician. They believe in dis- 
ease and recommend medicine!' 

Here we have it, exactly. Dr. Quimby did 
not believe in disease, except as " an error of 
mind," and did not recommend medicine. So, 
while he accepted spirit-condition, to the full- 
est extent, he refused to accept information 
from it at second hand. He held that, because 
a man had " passed over to the other side," as 
the Spiritualists say, he was not necessarily any 
wiser than he had been in " mind reduced to a 
state called matter." 

"The invisible world [said he] opens all 



The Origin of the New Thought. 33 

the avenues of matter, through which to give 
the inhabitants communications ; but the natural 
man has possession of the mediums, so that 
the scientific man is misrepresented in nine- 
tenths of all he says. Now to be in the scien- 
tific world is not necessarily to be wise, but to 
acknowledge a wisdom above the natural man, 
which will enter the world where wisdom sees 
through matter. This is the condition of 
those persons who are thrown into a clairvoy- 
ant state. To them, matter is nothing but an 
idea, that is seen or not just as it is called out. 
All their senses are in this state, but are under 
the control of the natural man. . . . The 
explanation of the scientific world is given 
by these blind guides. . . . who cannot under- 
stand science." 

From this last quotation, we can see pre- 
cisely how Dr. Quimby at once accepted and 
rejected Spiritualism; and we can see, as well, 
how he reached the posture of rational ideal- 
ism. As far as concerned his powers or gifts, 
the good man was what would now be called 
a " mesmerist," a " clairvoyant," and a " heal- 
ing medium " — only he was of so sensitive a 
spiritual nature that he could exercise these 
3 



34 The Church of St. Bunco. 

faculties " in his senses," or in what, to him T 
was " a perfectly normal state." If, to his 
own direct vision and experience, " matter " 
was " nothing but an idea," to be seen or not, 
just as it is called out," his conclusion could 
only be that " all that is seen by the natural 
man is mind reduced to a state called matter," 
and that " there is no matter independent of 
mind, or life." 

But even if granting this posture as a phil- 
osophical premise, is it a logical conclusion to 
insist, with Dr. Quimby, that disease is merely 
" a belief," and that " health is wisdom? " 

" I deny disease as a truth," said he, but 
" admit it as a deception. Disease is an evil 
that follows taking an opinion for a truth. 
Every disease is an invention of man, and has 
no identity in wisdom. . . . Disease is the mis- 
ery of our belief, happiness is the health of 
our wisdom. . . . False reasoning is sick- 
ness and death. . . . The devil is the error of 
mankind. . . .We are made up of truth and 
error. Disease is an error, or belief; the Truth 
is the cure." 

It is necessary to explain, however, that Dr. 
Quimby found the cause of human misery 



The Origin of the New Thought. 35 

" not alone in the conscious mind " and the 
" opinions and beliefs about disease," but in the 
<s mental influences and thoughts by which 
every person is surrounded," and in the " un- 
conscious or subconscious mind. ,, He de- 
clared that he could tell " an idea or cause " 
of sickness from the sensation produced by it, 
" just as a person knows an orange by the 
odor. ,, As he " was able to do this," says Mr. 
Dresser, " he always told the patient, at the 
first sitting, what the latter thought was his 
disease, and never allowed the patient to tell 
him anything about the case." 

In a later chapter of our book, the hypothe- 
sis that because, in the last analysis " all things 
are mind," all disease can be cured by mind 
while it exists in the body, will be carefully 
considered. Meanwhile it must be admitted, 
without reserve, that under this doctrine, 
which Dr. Quimby himself believed with all 
his might, he practised " healing," for many 
years, with marvelous success. 

He labored, too, under great difficulties. 
Fifty years ago, the average inhabitant of New 
England was not quite so bigoted and super- 
stitious, perhaps, as the Jews in the time of 



36 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Christ, but quite enough so to suggest a com- 
parison. Dr. Quimby was not orthodox in 
his theology, and was still less orthodox in 
medicine. As Mr. Dresser records the situa- 
tion, 

" [Those] who were then willing to try a 
practitioner outside of the medical schools, 
were persons who had exhausted every means 
of help within those schools, and, when finally 
booked for the grave, would send or go to 
Quimby." 

In the way of a " grim joke," the Doctor 
himself said that his patients " would send for 
him and the undertaker at the same time, and 
the one who got there first would get the case." 
And the worst of it all was that his power, 
when acknowledged, was frequently " im- 
puted to the devil." Still, he had more work 
than he could do — so much that it wore him 
completely out, and finally ended his life at the 
age of sixty- four. In his busiest days, he said : 

" I have sat with more than three hundred 
individuals every year for ten years, and for 
the last five years I have averaged five hun- 
dred yearly — people with all sorts of diseases, 
and every possible state of mind, brought on 



The Origin of the New Thought. 37 

by all kinds of ideas in which people believe. 
Religion in its various forms embraces many of 
these causes. Some cases have been occa- 
sioned by the idea that [the patients] had com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin. When asked 
what it was, no two persons ever answered 
alike." 

There is no doubt that Dr. Quimby's pa- 
tients were generally cured, unless he told them 
at once that they were past his or any other 
mortal aid. " He saw through them at a 
glance," as all who knew him agree in testi- 
fying. To deceive him was impossible. For 
instance: A lady who scouted his special 
vision, and was in good health, went to him 
feigning illness, and for the purpose of a test. 
" He received her, as he would any one, and, 
after a few moments, without a word having 
been spoken, took his chair, and, placing it 
before her, sat down with his back to her, say- 
ing : * That is the way you feel toward me. 
I think you don't need my services, and had 
better go home.' " A patient and friend — an 
eye-witness of unquestionable veracity — says : 

" People were coming to Dr. Quimby from 
all parts, oi New England. Many of these 



38 The Church of St. Bunco. 

came on crutches, or were assisted into the 
office ; and it was most interesting to note their 
progress day by day, or the remarkable change 
produced by a single sitting. ... I remem- 
ber one lady who had used crutches for twenty 
years, who walked without them after a few 
weeks." 

There is now living in Boston a gentleman 
who happens to be personally known to the 
present writer. The gentleman is a college 
graduate of high culture, of large experience, 
and with the rest, is an author of distinction. 
When a young- man he had a serious affliction 
of the eyes, which gradually increased until he 
was threatened with blindness. He was a 
man of means, and no expense was spared to 
secure the best medical treatmnet. It was un- 
availing. He heard of Dr. Quimby, and, as 
the usual " last resort," applied to him. " He 
cured me," says the gentleman, " and I have 
had no trouble since. But how he did it I 
don't know. He sat and talked with me, and 
sometimes touched my head and face with his 
hands, moistened with cold water, though de- 
claring even this to be of no vital consequence. 
He cured other people of all sorts of things, 



The Origin of the New Thought. 39 

as easily as he cured me. Here I am with two 
good eyes, and you have the facts."* 

The ultimate value of " The New Thought/' 
or " Mental and Moral Healing," is yet a 
problem ; but that P. P. Quimby was the spring 
and fountain of the whole stream, with its va- 
rious branches, is beyond all reputable dispute. 
It rests on these grounds : 

First. He claimed it himself in the pres- 
ence of all whom he met, spreading the claim 
broadcast even in newspaper advertisements 
and business circulars. 

Second. Many of the most intelligent and 
trustworthy of his patients became, as we have 
seen, correspondents of the press to express 
their gratitude for his cures, and scores of their 
articles have been preserved. With no excep- 
tion, these articles substantiate Dr. Quimby' s 
declaration that he alone, of all persons then 
living, treated disease through the normal ac- 
tion of the human mind. 

Third. Dr. Quimby had a son, Mr. George 

* The gentleman is Hon. Edwin Reed, of Boston, Mass. 
His name is given by his permission, from a feeling of 
gratitude to Dr. Quimby, and profound respect for his 
memory. 



40 The Church of St. Bunco. 

A. Quimby, who acted for years as his father's 
secretary. This gentleman is living, and is a 
well and widely known citizen of Belfast, 
Maine. His distinct claim for Dr. Quimby is 
that " up to his time, no man, since Jesus, had 
attempted and succeeded in curing the sick, 
without medicine, applications, mesmermism, 
hypnotism or spiritualism, simply mentally — 
through the mind and sense — and who fur- 
ther claimed that he did it in a scientific man- 
ner which could be taught to others, . . . and 
was in a normal state of mind all the time, as 
also was his patient." 

Fourth. A number of Dr. Quimby 's pa- 
tients and close friends long survived him, and 
several of them still live. With a single ex- 
ception, every one of these people has said, in 
substance, exactly what Mr. George A. Quim- 
by states in detail. 

Fifth. The single exception is a lady who 
once said what all the rest say — and who is 
completely on record as saying it — but who, for 
reasons easy to understand and explain, has 
since taken a lady's high and mighty privilege 
of " changing her mind." We will inspect 
this change. 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 41 



CHAPTER III. 

DR. QUIMBY'S MOST DISTINGUISHED PATIENT. 

Dr. Quimby was at the height of his career 
during the early days of our Civil War. 
Among his patients at that time was one who 
has since become the most celebrated of them, 
and who now bears the name of Mary Baker 
Glover Eddy. Then, however, the patient was 
known as Mary M. Patterson — an incident 
which occurred through her being a very ener- 
getic and pious woman, who has attracted to 
herself a considerable variety of husbands.* It 
was in 1862, says Dr. Quimby's biographer, 
Mrs. A. G. Dresser, " that Mrs. Eddy, author 
of Science and Health, was associated with 
Dr. Quimby; and I well remember the very 
day when she was helped up the steps of his 
office on the occasion of her first visit. She 
was cured by him, and afterward became very 

* Mrs. Eddy's. complete name, with reference to these 
gentlemen, would be Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy. 



42 The Church of St. Bunco. 

much interested in hisi theory. But she put 
her own construction on much of his teaching, 
and developed a system of thought which dif- 
fered radically from it." 

Mrs. Mary Baker G. Patterson (since 
Mrs. Eddy), was greatly surprised at her cure, 
and naturally grateful for it. She at once said 
so in print. It was in an issue of the Port- 
land Evening Courier, of November 7th, 1862. 
Her account was this: 

" Three weeks ago I quitted my nurse and 
sick-room en route for Portland. The belief 
of my recovery had died out of the hearts of 
those who were most anxious for it. With 
this mental and physical depression, I first vis- 
ited P. P. Quimby, and in less than one week 
from that time I ascended by a stairway of one- 
hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of 
the City Hall, and am improving ad infinitum. 
... I have employed electro-magnetism and 
animal magnetism, and for a brief period I 
have felt relief. . . but in no instance did 
I get rid of a return of all my ailments, be- 
cause I had not been helped out of the error in 
which opinions involve us. My operator be- 
lieved in disease independent of mind ; hence I 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 43 

could not be wiser than my teacher. But now 
I can see, dimly at first, and only as trees walk- 
ing, the great principle which underlies Dr. 
Quimby's faith and works ; and just in propor- 
tion to my right perception of truth is my re- 
covery. This truth, which he opposes to the 
error of giving intelligence to matter and plac- 
ing pain where it never placed itself, if received 
understanding^, changes the currents of the 
system to their normal action, and the mechan- 
ism of the body goes on undisturbed. That 
this is a science capable of demonstration be- 
comes clear to the minds of those patients who 
reason upon the process of their cure. The 
truth which he establishes in the patient cures 
him (although he may be wholly unconscious 
thereof), and the body, which is full of light, 
is no longer in disease." 

The communication of Mrs. Mary Baker G. 
Eddy — then Mrs. Mary M. Patterson — which 
she published in the Portland Courier, was 
criticised, the next day, November 8th, 1862, 
by the Portland Advertiser. In reply to that 
paper she said: 

" P. P.- Quimby stands upon the plain of wis- 
dom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, 



44 The Church of St. Bunco. 

but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the 
former speaks as never man before spake, and 
heals as never man healed since Christ, is he 
not identified with truth, and is not this the 
Christ which is in him? ... P. P. Quim- 
by rolls away the stone from the sepulcher of 
error, and health is the resurrection. . . . But 
light shineth in darkness, and the darkness 
comprehendeth it not/'* 

Dr. Quimby having died on the 16th of 
January, 1866, Mrs. M. B. G. Patterson — 
not to be Mrs. M. B. G. Patterson Eddy 
until 1867 — " sent to me," says Mr. Julius 
Dresser in his True History of Mental Science, 
" a copy of a poem she had written to his mem- 
ory." With the poem was sent the following 
letter : 

Lynn, February 15, 1866. 
Mr. Dresser: 

" Sir, — I enclose some lines of mine in mem- 
ory of our much loved friend, which perhaps 
you will not think overwrought in meaning: 
others must, of course. 

" I am constantly wishing that you would 

* The writer has had these records authenticated at 
Portland. G. C 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 45 

step forward into the place he has vacated. I 
believe you would do a vast amount of good, 
and are more capable of' occupying his place 
than any other I know of. 

" Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and 
struck my back on the ice and was taken up for 
dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of 
vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, cam- 
phor, etc., but to find myself the helpless crip- 
ple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby. 

" The physician attending said I had taken 
the last step I ever should, but in two days I 
got out of my bed alone, and will walk ; but yet 
I confess I am frightened, and out of that nerv- 
ous heat my friends are forming, spite Of me, 
the terrible spinal affection from which I have 
suffered so long and hopelessly. . . . Now 
can't you help me? I believe you can. I 
write this with this feeling: I think that I 
could help another in my condition if they had 
not placed their intelligence in matter. This 
I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. 
Won't you write me if you will undertake for 
me if I can get to you ? . . . 
" Respectfully, 

" Mary M. Patterson/' 



46 The Church of St. Bunco. 

The poem by the lady destined to become 
Mrs. Eddy, author of Science and Health, was 
published by her, with her name attached, 
under the caption of 

" Lines on the death of Dr. P. P. Quimby, who 
healed with the Truth that Christ taught, in 
contradistinction to all Isms." 

" Did sackcloth clothe the sun, and day grow night, 
All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes, 
When Truth, receding from our mortal sight, 
Had paid to error her last sacrifice ? 

" Can we forget the power that gave us life? 
Shall we forget the wisdom of its way ? 
Then ask me not amid this mortal strife — 
This keenest pang of animated clay — 

" To mourn him less : to mourn him more were just, 
If to his memory 'twere a tribute given 
For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust 
Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven — 

" Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul, 
Growing in stature to the throne of God. 
Rest should reward him who hath made us whole, 
Seeking, tho' tremblers, where his footsteps trod. 

Mary M. Patterson. 

The complete identity of Mrs. Mary M. Pat- 
terson with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy has 



Dr. Quimbys Distinguished Patient. 47 

been fully established by the highest Christian- 
Science authority in the world — Mrs. Eddy 
herself. In a letter dated March 7th, 1883, 
addressed to the Boston Post, she said: 

" In 1862 my name was Patterson, my hus- 
band, Dr. Patterson, a distinguished dentist. 
After our marriage I was confined to my bed 
with a severe illness, and seldom left bed or 
room for seven years, when I was taken to Dr. 
Quimby and partially restored. I returned 
home, hoping once more to make that home 
happy, but only returned to a new agony to 
find that my husband had eloped with a mar- 
ried woman from one of the wealthy families 
of that city, leaving no trace save his last letter 
to us, wherein he wrote : ' I hope some time 
to be worthy of so good a wife. I have a bill 
of divorce from him. . . ." 

In her letter to the Boston Post Mrs. Eddy 
made some other interesting assertions. She 
said :* 

" We never were a student of Dr. Quimby. 

* The original print has been in my hands. A copy of 
the letter is published in full in The True History of 
Mental Science (Appendix A). — G. C. 



48 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Dr. Quimby never had students to our knowl- 
edge. He was somewhat of a remarkable 
healer, and at the time we knew him he was 
known as a mesmerist. We were one of his 
patients." 

What an astonishing look these statements 
by Mrs. Eddy in 1883 have, when compared 
with the statements of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson 
from 1862 to 1866. Let us see. — 

Statement of 1883. 

" At the time we knew him [Dr. Quimby], 
he was known as a mesmerist.' ' 

Statement of 1866. 

" Dr. Quimby healed with the truth that 
Christ taught, in contradistinction to all Isms." 

" Rest should reward him who hath made 
us whole, seeking, tho' tremblers* where his 
footsteps trod!' 

On March 7th, 1883, Mrs. Mary Baker G. 
Eddy made, in the Boston Post 

This Statement. 

" We had laid the foundation of mental 
healing long before we ever saw Dr. Quimby. 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 49 

. . . We made our first experiments in mental 
healing about 1853, when we were convinced 
that mind had a science which, if understood, 
would heal all diseases." 

In October, 1862, the same lady, through the 
Portland Courier, made 

This Statement. 

" I can see, dimly at first and as trees walk- 
ing, the great principle which underlies Dr. 
Quimby's faith and works; and just in propor- 
tion to my right perception of truth is my re- 
covery. This truth, which he opposes to the 
error of giving intelligence to matter, changes 
the currents of the system. The truth which 
he establishes in the patient cures him. This 
is a science capable of demonstration to those 
who reason upon the process." 

Then, in the Portland Advertiser, came Mrs. 
Eddy's extraordinary comparison of Dr. Quim- 
by's words and deeds with those of Christ, and 

This Statement. 



a 



P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from 
the sepulcher of error, and health is the res- 
urrection." 

4 



So The Church of St. Bunco. 

On the publication of Julius A. Dresser's 
True History of Mental Science — to which 
reference has been made in our previous chap- 
ter — Mrs. Eddy was greatly exercised over it. 
In her Christian Science Journal for June, 
1887, she devoted the leading article, under 
her own name, to the Dresser pamphlet 

This little thing was a calm statement of 
facts, proved as they were given. From the 
facts, Dr. Quimby's theory was drawn, and 
Mr. Dresser frankly recounted what the gen- 
eral reader would consider Dr. Quimby's 
foibles and prejudices, as well as his doctrines 
and gifts. The pamphlet contained Mrs. Mary 
M. Patterson's opinion of Dr. Quimby in 1862, 
and her poem of 1866. It agreed with what 
was then the substance of her own assertions, 
by summarizing Dr. Quimby " as the first per- 
son of this age who penetrated the depths of 
truth so far as to discover and bring forth a 
true science of life, and openly apply it to the 
healing of the sick." 

But, in criticising Mr. Dresser's quiet mono- 
graph, the amiable " Mother of Christian 
Science/' proclaimed that Mr. Dresser had "let 
loose the dogs of war " ; had unleashed a " pet 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 51 

poodle," alternately " to bark and whine " at 
her " heels " ; and she identified the " pet poo- 
dle " with a certain " sticking litterateur, ,, 
who had renounced allegiance to her.* But 
when her preliminary high-tide had ebbed a 
little, her pen dropped this : 

" Did I write those articles in Mr. Dresser's 
pamphlet, purporting to be mine? I might 
have written them, twenty or thirty years ago, 
for I was under the mesmeric treatment of Dr. 
Quimby from 1862 until his death, in 1865. 
He was illiterate, and knew nothing then of 
the science of Mind-healing; and I was as ig- 
norant of mesmerism as Eve before she was 
tempted by the serpent." 

Those Patterson-Eddy " articles," then — -no 
possible mendacity being adequate to their ex- 
tinction — have been grudgingly and angrily 
admitted by their author to be genuine. But 
she would ignore them on the ground of " mes- 

* The gentleman here traduced is Dr. L. M. Marston of 
Boston. He is a practising physician, and a thoughtful, 
honest man. He is the author of a well-written book entitled, 
Essentials of Mental Healing, which is much superior to 
Science and Health, though containing some of the overdone 
conceptions of mind - cure in general. But Dr. Marston 
properly employs material as well as mental medicine. — G. C. 



52 The Church of St. Bunco. 

merism." Her " head," she says, " was so 
turned by Animal Magnetism and will power " 
under Dr. Quimby's treatment, that she "might 
have written something as hopelessly incor- 
rect " as the articles referred to. 

But was Mrs. Mary M. Patterson under 
" mesmeric treatment," or did Mrs. Mary Pat- 
terson Eddy ever really believe she was under 
such treatment, when with Dr. Quimby ? And 
was she then a truly " ignorant Eve," without 
a fig-leaf of knowledge pertaining to mesmer- 
ism? In 1862 she thought not, and we have 
seen that, in writing her first newspaper letter 
on Dr. Quimby, she turned her thought into 
these words : 

" I have employed electro-magnetism and 
animal magnetism, and for a brief period I 
have felt relief. . . but in no instance did I get 
rid of a return of all my ailments, because I 
had not been helped out of the error in which 
opinions involve us. My operator believed in 
disease independent of mind; hence I could not 
be wiser than my teacher." 

Mrs. Patterson continued her letter by say- 
ing what has already been quoted in full — that 
Dr. Quimby cured her by " a great principle 



>>; 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 53 

of " science/' through which he established 
" the truth " in " the patient " — a truth which 
he opposed to the error of giving intelligence 
to matter, and placing pain where it never 
placed itself.'' 

In Mrs. Eddy's magazine article of June, 
1887, she went so far as to say of Dr. Quimby, 

" His healing was never considered or called 
anything but Mesmerism." 

Well, Mrs. Mary M. Patterson, from 1862 
to 1866, both " considered " and " called " the 
Doctor's healing something wholly different 
from mesmerism ; and, saying it was done " by 
the truth which Christ taught," she considered 
and called it something " in contradistinction 
to all Isms." 

Meanwhile, for more than three years of 
Mrs. Eddy's close acquaintance with Dr. 
Quimby, all his advertisements, even, told her, 
what she then fluently repeated, that he cured 
disease by implanting truth in the human mind, 
in place of error — " the truth being the cure." 
In other words, everything around her pro- 
claimed that Dr. Quimby's cures were per- 
formed wholly by Mind-healing. 

Mrs. Eddy's reversal of herself has been so 



54 The Church of St. Bunco. 

agile and exhaustive since her comparisons of 
Dr. Quimby with our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
she has latterly preferred to speak of the good 
old doctor, who taught and healed her, as " un- 
learned " — a " mesmerist " who cured a patient 
by " rubbing " her — an " illiterate " man who 
said that he was only " John " while she was 
" Jesus," and whose " scribblings '' she, to a 
considerable extent, wrote herself. From all 
this it must be adduced that Mrs. Eddy, in her 
Patterson days, went to Dr. Quimby to be 
cured of disease, but taught him to do it. 

It is true, as we have noted, that Dr. Quimby 
was not an educated man, in the sense of the 
schools. It would have been impossible for 
him to write like Mrs. Eddy. When, for in- 
stance, she excogitated that first letter of Mrs. 
Patterson's to the Portland Courier, she opened 
it in this way : 

" When our Shakespeare decided that there 
were more things in this world ' than were 
dreamed of in your philosophy/ I cannot say 
of a verity that he had a foreknowledge of P. 
P. Quimby. And when the school Platonic an- 
atomized the soul and divided it into halves, 
to be united by elementary attractions, and 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 55 

heathen philosophers averred that old Chaos in 
sullen silence brooded o'er the earth until her 
inimitable form was hatched from the egg of 
night, I would not at present decide whether 
the fallacy was found in their premises or con- 
clusions, never having dated my existence be- 
fore the flood/' 

No : P. P. Quimby, even if aided by all the 
freshmen and sophomores that ever lived, could 
never have risen into the state of gorgeous, 
ponderous culture evinced in the foregoing 
power-house and epitome of all learning. Be- 
sides, when that incomparable paragraph was 
erected, Mrs. Eddy was young — not yet fifty 
vears of age. At sixty, her literary style had 
lost something of its dazzle ; but, in matter, all 
her work, especially her world-renowned book, 
Science and Health, compares beautifully with 
her grand production of 1862. 

P. P. Quimby was a plain man of great na- 
tural genius. When he wrote — generally in 
great haste — he paid little attention to capital 
letters, punctuation, or form of any kind; but 
his manuscripts were carefully revised, under 
his own direction, by his two faithful friends, 
the Ware sisters, or by his son, Mr. George A. 



56 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Quimby. Mrs. Mary M. Patterson borrowed 
and read some occasional jotting — that was all. 
In the possession of Mr. George A. Quimby are 
eight hundred pages of his father's writings, 
prepared before Dr. Quimby had the honor of 
knowing that Mrs. Patterson (to be Eddy) 
w r as on the face of the earth. These writings 
contain the substance of all his thoughts. 

The knowledge that such writings exist has 
much disturbed Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Pat- 
terson Eddy. On the 21st of May, 1887, she 
published, through a Boston newspaper, an 
offer to print the Quimby manuscripts, at her 
own expense, provided she should " first be al- 
lowed to examine said manuscripts," and to see 
that " they were his own compositions/' not 
hers, which she " had left with him many years 
ago." 

Now Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, author of 
Science and Health, filled with " immortal 
mind " and the only " divine science " ever 
'" demonstrated," is of course an honest wo- 
man. Many delightful innocents of all sizes 
would take her word for anything she promised. 
There is not a single member of her Church 
Scientist who is not sure that her little hatchet 



Dr. Quimby's Distinguished Patient. 57 

is infinitely cleaner and brighter than George 
Washington's. Still, the possessors of the 
Quimby manuscripts, not yet having teetered 
themselves above all " earthly wisdom," would 
rather not trust her with their property. 

A few years ago, the eldest of Dr. Quimby's 
two devoted friends, the Ware sisters, passed 
away. With the younger sister she left the 
following statement, in the form of an affidavit, 
which is here printed with permission : 

" I, Emma G. Ware, of Portland, Maine, in 
the United States of America, do hereby de- 
clare that I knew personally the late Phineas 
Parkhurst Quimby, and that I and my sister, 
Mrs. Mackay (formerly Sarah E. Ware), were 
his patients while he resided in Portland, be- 
tween the years 1859 and 1865, and that we 
both owe our restored health to his treatment 
or mode of teaching. I have learned that at- 
tempts are being made to deprive him of the 
credit of being the first to introduce the method 
of healing through the mind (or, more cor- 
rectly, of applying moral philosophy to the cure 
of diseases), and I make this declaration out of 
regard to him, in order that the credit to which 
he is entitled may not, without protest, be as- 



58 The Church of St. Bunco. 

sumed by others. I know that while Mr. 
Quimby resided in Portland he wrote out his 
ideas on Mental Science : he was not a scholarly 
man, and on that account copies of his writings 
were made by my sister, myself, and by Mr. 
Quimby's son, George A. Quimby. These 
copies were read over to Mr. Quimby, and such 
corrections made as he thought fit. They are 
now in the possession of Mr. George A. 
Quimby, who resides in Belfast, Maine, and 
my sister and I have also copies of a number 
of them. Beyond these, there are no other 
copies of his writings, if I except a few fugitive 
pieces which he gave away while he resided in 
Fortland. The mode of reasoning pursued by 
Mr. Quimby is not new, but its application to 
disease as a remedy has not, so far as I am 
aware, been previously made in modern times. 
His teaching may be thus summarized : that all 
diseases, whether mental or physical, are caused 
by an error in reasoning, and that correcting 
the error will remove the cause, and restore the 
sufferer to health." 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 59 



CHAPTER IV. 



r A GREAT " METAPHYSICAL " NOVEL. 



As shown by our last chapter, Mrs. Mary 
Baker Glover Eddy, whatever divine attributes 
may have perched upon her, has been endowed 
with some very human qualities. But in onegift 
she has been strangely lacking — a good mem- 
ory. For, in spite of her association with Dr. 
P. P. Quimby, his renovation of her broken 
system, and all the mellifluous prose and poetry 
she devoted to him in his day, the fruitful 
" mother," " discoverer," and " founder " of 
'* Christian Science," when she came to set up 
her new religion, entirely forgot that her old 
friend, Quimby, was the real suggestion of her 
whole Shekinah. She not only failed to men- 
tion the fact, but she has been so miraculously 
forgetful, ever since, as to repudiate her own 
record of it, and to attempt the obliteration of 
it from sacred and profane history. 

Mother Eddy's lack of memory, however. 



60 The Church of St. Bunco. 

has had its plenary compensation. Her imag- 
ination has more than made up for it. The 
surcharge of this illimitable faculty has enabled 
her to produce one of the greatest works of 
fiction ever conceived on earth, or possible to 
any other planet. This arch-angelic romance, 
dimly and very distantly founded on fact, 
bears the esoteric title of Retrospection and In- 
trospection. It is not in the usual form of a 
novel, but was evaporated by Mrs. Eddy as her 
corporal and spiritual biography, after she had 
dropped Dr. Quimby from her powers of re- 
search, and had built up her grand theological 
and financial industry, " Christian Science." 
From an attentive reading of this personally 
conducted and authorized volume, we know the 
light in which the hallowed lady wishes to ap- 
pear, and we know a good deal more if we read 
between the lines. 

At eight years of age — if we can only credit 
true piety hitched up with lost memory — a 
heaven-selected little girl, Mary Baker, u re- 
peatedly heard a voice," calling her " distinctly 
by name, three times in an ascending scale." 
At first she thought it was a human voice ; but 
in due season — for the call came many times — 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 61 

she, her mother and her cousin, Mehitable 
Huntoon, learned better. Then her mother 
read to her the Hebrew story of little Samuel, 
and advised her to respond to the voice, say- 
ing, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 
Finally the chosen virgin took this advice, 
whereupon the voice " came no more " to her 
" material senses." Its mission had been ful- 
filled. 

Such is the opening legend told to the ma- 
rines of the Church Scientist, in that juicy 
book, Retrospection and Introspection* 

Still, in these days of " Spiritual manifesta- 
tions," the numerous believers in messages 
from " the summer land " would account, in a 
quite simple way, for the voices calling little 
Hebrew Samuel and little New-England Mary. 
But not so Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. " Am 
I a believer in Spiritualism? " she asks. " I be- 
lieve in no ism. ... As I understand it Spirit- 
ualism is the antipode of Christian Science." f 

Ah, it was no voice of common, finite spirit, 
that came to the high and mighty founder of 

* Retrospection and Instrospection, by Mary Baker G. 
Eddy, loth thousand, 1896. Pages 7, 8, 9. 
f Ibid., page 35. 



62 The Church of St. Bunco. 

an " absolutely scientific religion." So there is 
but one conclusion she gives us to draw: the 
voice was directly the voice of God. The In- 
finite and Omniscient, the All-in-All, spake to 
the girl of nine years, as a miraculous call to 
her divine work. At that time, she tells us, 
her father thought her " brain " was " too 
large for her body." * The old gentleman 
was doubtless right. It looks, too, as if the 
brain of his blessed daughter, with the entire 
head containing it, has been rapidly enlarging 
ever since. 

From the metaphysical adventures of Saint 
Mary Baker, as told in her Retrospection and 
Introspection,^ we find that when twelve years 
old she was admitted to the " Orthodox 
Church " of New England, though she de- 
clined to accept the doctrine of predestination 
— a doctrine which so troubled her that a doc- 
tor was called, who pronounced her " stricken 
with fever." It is told of Martin Luther that 
when a theological student once came to him 
half-crazy over the same doctrine, the doughty 
reformer ordered him to go and get " well 

* Retrospection and Introspection , p. 10. 
f Ibid., Page 12. 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 63 

drunk." In the case of Robert Ingersoll, his 
soul could only find relief from the tenet by 
such hard swearing that it brought him peace. 
But we are assured by our divine lady of the 
" Church Scientist " that she took the better as 
well as the usual course prescribed for such 
trials. She " wrestled in prayer/' For she 
felt sure that the Creator of the Universe, who 
had once descended in person and spoken to 
her by name, could not fail to possess the fac- 
ulty of hearing and the usefulness of help. 
Behold it was so ! Instantly the fever was 
gone and health was restored. "The physi- 
cian marveled,' , she says, and John Calvin 
" lost his power." 

In 1878 Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy was 
called to preach at the Baptist Tabernacle of 
Boston. The congregation increased beyond 
the capacity of the pews, and it was no uncom- 
mon occurrence for the sick to be healed by her 
sermons. Cancers were cured, and " many 
pale cripples went into the church, leaning on 
crutches, who went out carrying them on their 
shoulders." Mrs. Eddy says so.* 

By the same authority — in her Retrospection 
* The Great Novel, p. 17. 



64 The Church of St. Bunco. 

and Introspection — it is stated that her " Sci- 
ence of Divine Metaphysical Healing," other- 
wise " Christian Science," was " discovered " 
by her in 1866. The day and date are not 
given. But it was some time after February 
15th; for at that time one Mary M. Patterson 
was occupied in putting on, poetic mourning 
for Dr. P. P. Quimby, and in begging Mr. 
Julius A. Dresser to visit Lynn and heal an in- 
jury to her back from a fall on the ice. 

It is not well to wear mourning too long. 
In the spring of 1866 it must have occurred 
to Mrs. Eddy that weeds of poetry would not 
pay, and she hustled them off. Dr. Quimby 
having gone " to heaven " and slipped out of a 
decayed memory, his obituary poetess just then 
realized that she had spent " twenty years " 
in tracing " physical effects to a mental cause." 
Then came the " scientific certainty " that " all 
causation " is " Mind," and that " every ef- 
fect is a mental phenomenon."* 

What " Christian Scientists " mean by " sci ■ 

entific certainty " is proof by " healing." Take 

the revered principle of cosmogony that " the 

moon is made of green cheese." If one who 

* Retrospection and Introspection , p. 28 to p. 35. 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 65 

holds the doctrine, " heals " anybody, the prop- 
osition is " demonstrated. " Mrs. Eddy's " sci- 
entific works " are all filled with this unanswer- 
able logic. " Mortal Mind " — a thing which she 
utterly reprobates — may find difficulty in ac- 
cepting the conclusion; but it is doubtless quite 
as well founded as most of the " healing " it- 
self. 

Mrs. Eddy's own case is an illustration in 
point. A bed-ridden invalid for years, she 
was snatched from death, she has told us, by 
Dr. Quimby, and within a week of his first 
mental treatment she climbed to the top of a 
city hall. The writer has read a series of Mrs. 
Eddy's unpublished letters, which show that 
for some time she had varied nervous and 
spinal relapses. When not with Dr. Quimby, 
she wrote to him for " absent treatments," 
and sometimes saw him appear to her — 
or said she did — in response. Finally she 
was cured. Then she fell on an icy side- 
walk, was nearly frightened to death, and 
wrote her letter beseeching Mr. Dresser to 
" undertake " for her. But, having been 
taught mind-healing by Dr. Quimby, she 
"demonstrated" over herself, and got up. 
5 



66 The Church of St. Bunco. 

The Doctor's original cure appears to have been 
so effective that her fall on the ice was mostly 
a jar of her imagination and a contusion on 
her veracity. For, in her Retrospection and 
Introspection, she solemnly affirms that her ac- 
cident caused an injury far beyond the reach of 
'* medicine " or " surgery," which she repaired 
by application of the Divine Spirit. This ex- 
perience, says Mrs. Eddy (" scientist"), was a 
" falling apple of discovery " to her. There- 
upon she went out into the wilderness of Bos- 
ton — " withdrew," that is, from society — for 
three years — that she might search the Scrip- 
tures and find " Science."* At the end of her 
retirement, she had learned that " Mind re- 
constructs the body," and that " nothing else 
can." How it is done, she adds, " the Spiritual 
Science of Mind must reveal." Her charge 
for a course of ten lessons in this " divine sci- 
ence " was soon fixed at " only three hundred 
dollars." t 

Of the genuine original " Christian Sci- 
ence " — the sole and undivided " discovery " 
of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy — she says: 

* The holy romance, page 28 and rest of chapter. 
t Retrospection and Introspection, page 61. 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 67 

" I named it Christian because it is compas- 
sionate, helpful, and spiritual. God I called 
Immortal Mind. That which sins, suffers, 
and dies, I named mortal mind. The physical 
senses, or sensuous nature, I called error and 
shadow. Soul I denominated Substance, be- 
cause Soul alone is truly substantial. God I 
characterized as individual entity, but his cor- 
poreality I denied. The Real I claimed as 
eternal; and its antipodes, or the temporal, I 
described as unreal. Spirit I called the real- 
ity; and matter, the unreality."* 

On the hash and rehash of theology, here 
announced, we need not dwell just now, but 
will consider, for the moment, how much of 
Mrs. Eddy's individually discovered and copy- 
righted creed was first expounded, though not 
copyrighted, by one P. P. Quimby. 

Dr. Quimby never thought of pushing his 
thought and work under the special name 
of " Christian Science," though his writings 
show that he used the term.f 

* Retrospection and Introspection, p. 29. 
r 1 1 have seen a brief article of his, entitled " Aristocracy and 
Democracy," and written under date of February, 1863, in which 
he said : " The religion of Christ is shown in the progress 



68 The Church of St. Bunco. 

He was not in pursuit of money by truckling 
to current preconception or prejudice. We 
recollect, however — for our own memory has 
not been laid in the tomb of our piety — that 
after " his truth was discovered " he " found 
his new views all portrayed and illustrated in 
Christ's teachings." We recollect that he said 
of his practise, " It belongs to a Wisdom that 
is above man as man. It was taught eighteen 
hundred years ago, and has never had a place in 
the heart of man since." He said, " There is a 
bread which, if a man eat, he is filled ; and this 
bread is Christ or Science." In 1865 the Port- 
land Advertiser said of Dr. Quimby : 

"By a method entirely novel and at first 
sight quite unintelligible, he has been slowly 
developing what he calls the 'Science of 
Health ' ; that is, as he defines it, a science 
founded on principles that can be taught and 
practised like that of mathematics, and not on 
opinion or experiments of any kind whatso- 
ever." 

Prior to the issue of Mrs. Eddy's Retrospec- 
tion and Introspection she had, of course, writ- 

of Christian Science, while the religion of society decays in 
proportion as liberal principles are developed." — G.C. 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 69 

ten her other great and better-known work of 
religious fiction, called Science and Health. 
Now the title of that book — the term " Sci- 
ence and Health " — is quite different from Dr. 
Quimby's term, "The Science of Health." Still, 
the chief distinction between them, consider- 
ing what Dr. Quimby taught, is that the latter 
came first and the former afterwards. 

It does not appear that God — who in our 
day has been personally known by Mrs. Eddy 
only — and in an interview which He took the 
trouble to seek — was ever technically defined 
by Dr. Quimby as " Immortal Mind/' or "char- 
acterized as individual entity," with " corpo- 
reality denied." It may have been so; for all 
the obligations derived by Mrs. Eddy from Dr. 
Quimby have not yet been published. By all 
competent theologians and metaphysicians, 
since the beginning at least of human records, 
God has been conceived and proclaimed as In- 
finite Spirit, one with " Immortal Mind," and 
above " corporeality," which has been ac- 
counted a temporary phase of finite things. 
Plato was pretty nearly made of this concep- 
tion in philosophy, and St. John in religion. 
P. P. Quimby was neither a Plato nor a Saint 



70 The Church of St. Bunco. 

John ; but he " agreed " with them, in his lit- 
eral, honest fashion, as he said he did with 
Bishop Berkeley. 

If Mrs. Eddy had ever read a history of phi- 
losophy before she instituted a religion, she 
would have found that Spinoza honored her 
advent, some two hundred years in advance of 
it, by postulating " Substance " as the " Soul " 
of things. Incidentally, too, he postulated 
" matter " as an " unreality of sense," and 
thus, in a way, as " error " and " shadow " — 
the product of " mortal mind." Dr. Quimby 
said, with the utmost possible distinctness, " I 
believe matter to be nothing but an idea be- 
longing to the senses" ; and it will be found, 
when his writings get published, that he said 
the same thing in some hundreds of different 
ways. But all this was known to the thought 
of India, even before books were written, and 
the original authorities for it had then been 
lost. 

But now: in one point of doctrine — and to 
her the most important one — Mother Mary 
Baker G. Eddy does stand completely " orig- 
inal," solitary and alone. She holds of " mat- 
ter " that it is not only not what it seems, but 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 71 

is nothing at all save " unreality." To recog- 
nize it as anything whatever, beyond " sha- 
dow " and " error," is to be buried in disease, 
sin, and death. Absolutely to deny the most 
palpable fact of daily existence is to Christian 
Science the one road to health and salvation. 

To Dr. Quimby, matter was a state of things 
'* reduced from mind," but the state and the 
things were here. They were perfectly actual 
as a condition, though not as an unrelated fix- 
ture of all time and eternity. Every " ideal- 
ist," in every age, has taken this view, except- 
ing only Mrs. Eddy. Of her own view, no hu- 
man being out of a refuge for imbeciles or the 
Church Scientist, could possibly begrudge 
her the sole copyright. In due order Mrs. 
Eddy's theological speculation will be further 
considered. 

From the Arabian Nights tales of Retrospec- 
tion and Introspection, we learn that, before 
setting up her new church, the revelator " wan- 
dered through the dim mazes of Materia 
Medica" She " found," in Jahr's two hun- 
dred and sixty-two remedies, the one pervad- 
ing secret that the less matter and the more 
mind, the better the work. Homeopathy 



72 The Church of St. Bunco. 

taught her that in the higher attenuations of 
its drugs, " matter is rarefied to its fatal es- 
sence, mortal mind/' Her conclusion was 
that " mortal belief," instead of any " drug," 
governs the action of material medicine. " I 
claim," says she, " for healing scientifically," 
that " it does away with all material medicine, 
and recognizes the antidote for all sickness, 
as well as sin, in the Immortal Mind ; and mor- 
tal mind as the source of all ills which befall 
mortals. . . . The mortal body being but the 
objective state of the mortal mind, this mind 
must be renovated to improve the body."* 

Considering the high moral perch on which 
Mrs. Eddy has set herself, and contemplating 
the cerulean nest in which she has laid the eggs 
of " science," it is really painful here to study 
her case of fatty degeneration of the memory. 
For, apart from mere phraseology and ac- 
quaintance with Jahr, Dr. P. P. Quimby had 
reached the principle and practise of " healing 
scientifically," more than twenty years before 
she proclaimed it in Science and Health, and 
he had applied it to Mrs. Eddy herself, thirteen 
years prior to that publication, which de- 
* Retrospection and Introspection^ from p. 40 to p. 43. 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 73 

scended from heaven in 1875. He did not 
mention " mortal mind " — by name, that is — 
for he called the fact of it " opinion of the nat- 
ural man," in " the state of matter," and so far 
of " error." He did not use the term, " Im- 
mortal Mind" ; for he designated it as " Wis- 
dom," " Science," and the " Christ," as distin- 
guished from " the man, Jesus/' Adopting 
the Christ principle, Dr. Quimby aimed to fol- 
low, persistently but humbly, in the footsteps 
of Jesus. Dr. Quimby, in fact, was covering, 
both theoretically and practically, the whole 
true and essential field of " Christian Science," 
while avoiding its nonsense and its humbugs, 
at a time when Mrs. Eddy, as " Mary OB. 
Glover," was a writer of love stories for 
" Peterson's Magazine."* 

* This was half a century ago ; but the productions — not 
" scribblings," of course, like Dr. Quimby's writings — are yet 
in mind among Mrs. Eddy's old acquaintances. One critic 
of them has said : " They were stories wherein the ' feller ' 
married the girl in the last chapter, and they lived happily 
ever after except when the baby was cutting teeth. The 
stories were not essays, were not metaphysical, and were 
hardly physical. Had Mrs. Eddy not written them, I never 
should have remembered them at all," 



74 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER V. 

A SOFT SET OF CRITICS. 

We have now learned a little of Mrs. Mary 
Baker G. Eddy's celestial and terrestrial biog- 
raphy, as derived from the supramundane 
novel, Retrospection and Introspection, and 
some other sources. Bare allusion has been 
made to her Science and Health. But this, 
she says, " is my most important work, con- 
taining the complete statement of Christian 
Science.' , 

The book, as we have seen, came among 
men — or, more strictly speaking, among less 
busy women — in 1875 5 an d a thousand copies^ 
we are told, comprised the first edition. " The 
critics," Mrs. Eddy informs us, pronounced 
it " wholly original," but a thing that would 
" never be read." 

The foolish "critics"! How little they 
knew about " originality " ! But they knew 
still less of Mrs. Eddy's " Spiritual afflatus" 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 75 

as she designates it, in the fervency of which 
" erudite systems of philosophy " had " melt- 
ed " ; nor did they realize her " divinely ap- 
pointed mission"; for, in 1891, Science and 
Health had reached sixty-two editions. " Then 
the critics said " that " Bishop Berkeley, David 
Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or certain Ger- 
man philosophers/' had originated Mrs. Eddy's 
sole and well-monopolized " Science." * 

Now if any " critics " ever did really shoot 
such soft intellectual putty as that, they ought 
certainly to have been condemned to the most 
heroic sort of mind-healing. 

Think of George Berkeley, the most acute, 
the most logical mind of his age, standing with 
both feet on John Locke's " Essay of the Hu- 
man Understanding," and attempting to pull 
himself up into the Infinite by mouthing the 
shibboleth that there is no finite ! 

And David Hume — the bonny skeptic, 
David — whose keenness brought the philoso- 
phy of his age to a logical standstill, and for 
the moment broke up all " metaphysics " ! Poor 
David Hume ! In the hands of what a " critic " 
it was, who imagined he had ever furnished a 

* Retrospection and Introspection^ p. 38 to p. 46. 



76 The Church of St. Bunco. 

speck of meat for such a haggis as Science and 
Health! 

For the moment, let us pass by Mr. Emer- 
son, the Puritan mystic of New England tran- 
scendentalism, who beamed serenely down on 
mere " critics," and told them he hoped he "had 
never said anything that needed to be proved." 
But Mrs. Eddy's phrase, " certain German 
philosophers/' is one that can only refer to 
Immanuel Kant, with his School of followers, 
who summed up the pure thinking of the mod- 
ern world, as Plato and Aristotle summed up 
the pure thinking of the ancient world. 

History tells us that Kant was a man who 
discovered the planet Uranus by mathematics 
before Herschel found it with a telescope, and 
who " had mastered all sciences " to date when 
he lived. Ripe with the knowledge of sixty 
years, he wrote his Critique of Pure Reason. 
This, the most profound and far-reaching 
treatise of any age, should have been named 
" The Analysis of Mind and Matter, Time and 
Space " ; for such was really Kant's subject and 
achievement. 

This extraordinary little German professor, 
Immanuel Kant, was the most regular and tern- 



A Great " Metaphysical " Novel. 77 

perate of human beings; but he had a touch 
of asthma, for which, before all the medicinal 
properties of mind-cure were known, he took 
daily about a thimble-full of rum. Kant has 
been frightfully dealt with by his " critics/' the 
most of whose heads he completely pulverized 
in connection with their activity in his behalf. 
But suppose Herr Professor Kant could have 
imagined that any " critic " on earth would 
ever accuse him of instigating the philosophy 
of Mary Baker G. Eddy ! In that dread event, 
" the sage of Konigsberg," who once lost the 
thread of a lecture when a button he used to 
finger was cut from his coat, might have been 
so disconcerted, so sunk in amazement and de- 
spair, as to swallow his whole bottle of liquor, 
instead of the twentieth of a gill, and to burn 
his Critique of Pure Reason in a fit of delirium 
tremens. 

It is well he was tempted into no such catas- 
trophe; for, on getting on a bit, we shall find 
that every possible system of " metaphysics/' 
to have any scientific foundation in modern 
thought, must refer itself to Kant's dissection 
of the universe. 



78 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER VI. 

" THE PRECIOUS VOLUME/' 

In the world of books, Mrs. Eddy's Science 
and Health is the specially " precious volume " ; 
for she herself so designates and describes it 
at the head of a chapter in her Retrospection 
and Introspection.* To her, indeed, it is a very 
precious volume — more precious than even a 
goodly pile of " the precious metals." Her 
devotees exchange these for it with sublime 
certainty that they get more than the worth of 
their money; and being in great need of sci- 
ence, to say nothing of health, their profuseness 
may be forgiven. 

But it should be said at once that " Christian 
Scientists " are neither a bad nor a specially 
crude sort of the world's queer inhabitants. 
They are fanatically honest; and, as a whole, 
they have just that " little knowledge " which 
has long been proverbial as "a dangerous 
thing." Then they are quite incapable of look- 

* Page 45. 



"The Precious Volume." 79 

ing through the veil worn by their beatific 
" Mother." 

In the eyes of the unregenerate, these chil- 
dren of hers frequently turn to Science and 
Health, or to a picture of its author celestially 
touched up, when it would be well to inspect 
their plumbing and wash their windows. But 
this is no broad case against them; for almost 
any sort of camp-meeting, without regard to 
sect, is apt to bring upon the wicked some small 
inconveniences. 

As can readily be seen, Mrs. Eddy's lambs 
are often amusing, and thus brighten life for 
less spiritual beings. 

There is my babe-eyed friend, Mr. Tott. He 
never committed a cent's worth of sin in his 
life. He is a veritable piece of the salt of the 
earth, a little over-salted. But his youth has 
departed, and his sight is failing. He used to 
wear glasses ; but he discarded them for 
" Christian Science " and a dim, economic 
light. He sees a little yet, though chiefly with 
" the eye of the mind." With this eye, how- 
ever, he beholds marvels of " healing " going 
on all around him, which he proclaims and 
verifies at the weekly meetings of his church. 



8o The Church of St. Bunco. 

He buys all Mrs. Eddy's books and publica- 
tions, as fast as they come out. By patient ef- 
fort he deciphers something of their contents. 
Then, as he contemplates an assertive text 
from Science and Health, or some tale of Jonah 
interpreted by Mother Eddy's Key to the 
Scriptures, a celestial calm descends on his soul, 
and folds it in a fabric softer than silk. He 
knows that he is better in health than ever be- 
fore, that he sees better, and that the entire 
universe is becoming unspeakably illuminated. 
Disease never touches his physical frame; he 
has merely " a belief of a cold," or " a belief of 
a corn." In the etherialized Mr. Tott only one 
thing ever suggests a remnant of "wicked mat- 
ter." Cast a doubt on the sainthood of Mrs. 
Eddy, then you behold an angel in anger. He 
may not indulge in personal violence, but he 
swiftly threatens that, if once you breathe 
your unholy doubt aloud, " Judge Hanna," or 
some other Sampson of " Science," will reduce 
you to a grease-spot.* 

* " Judge Hanna " is Mrs. Eddy's literary factotum. 
Mr. Tott is an actual personage, but, being ' ' in Sci- 
ence," he will probably never recognize his picture — 
especially as there are many like him. 



"The Precious Volume." 81 

But, among all Mrs. Eddy's followers, her 
" precious volume," Science and Health, is par- 
amountry precious to those who have paid their 
three hundred dollars for imbibing the inmost 
knowledge of her " unfathomable " religion, 
and have gone forth among the gentiles to 
teach and to heal. To a missionary " in sci- 
ence," the " precious volume " cannot be too 
preciously bound. Let the daintiest white of 
the white-winged dove encase its " inspired 
words/' printed on translated tissue of ethereal 
linen. Let the sheen of the gold standard fur- 
nish splendor for the edges of the leaves, and 
letters for the cover. Let the book be held be- 
fore the eyes of a new student or patient, with 
abysmal solemnity and mystic silence. Hypno- 
tism, if you name it such, is bitterly disallowed ; 
but " the precious volume " is so hallowed a 
thing that no danger can come from using it in 
the same way as the disk of a mesmerist. Im- 
pressiveness is the point — that self may depart, 
and " science " become boundless. Almost 
every religious sect in all history has had its 
fetich. " Christian Science " is not behind the 
procession. Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health 
is the fetich thereof. In a plain garment, for 



82 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the poorer saints, it may be had for three dol- 
lars and eighteen cents. In the purest, holiest, 
most golden robe it costs six dollars.* 

Let us look into Science and Health and see 
what it is; though the author warns us that 
something more than " mortal mind v is re- 
quired to understand it. This she asserts and 
repeats with the voice, as it were, of a fog- 
horn grown eternal, until a multitude of peo- 
ple have come to think that the sound really 
contains significance. In her Retrospection 
and Introspection Our Lady of " The Precious 
Volume " says :f 

" Science and Health is the textbook of 
Christian Science. . . . When the demand 
for this book increased, and people were healed 
by simply reading it, the copyright was in- 
fringed. I entered a suit at law, and my copy- 
right was protected." 

The case of " protected copyright " to which 
Mrs. Eddy refers, took place in 1883. A Mr. 
Arens had practised some sort of " mental 
healing," without the consent of the papal 

* See advertisements iu all Christian Science publi- 
cations. 

f Page 47. 



"The Precious Volume." 83 

mother of " Christian Science." In connection 
with such healing he had issued some pam- 
phlets, in which, according to the court records, 
he certainly came very near to reproducing 
certain sentences from Science and .Health, 
which had a commercial value in his line, 
though they would not have sold for a cent out 
of " Science." The man's defense was that 
Mrs. Eddy's own works were not original with 
her, but had been copied from writings by Dr. 
Quimby. 

Now Dr. Quimby, as we have seen, had 
sown the seed of the whole modern field of 
" mental healing," and Mrs. Eddy, as Mary M. 
Patterson, had told the whole truth about it. 
But Quimby's simple doctrine was that mat- 
ter is a phase of mind; and hence that the mind 
of man, as an inlet of God's truth and power, 
can change the body and cure disease. Appro- 
priating this thought, Mrs. Eddy had stretched 
it out and blown it up into the ponderous mis- 
fit labeled " Christian Science." 

In 1883 none of Dr. Quimby's writings had 
been published, and there was no convenient 
evidence to prove that Mrs. Eddy had ascribed' 
his mind-healing to " the Christ that was in 



84 The Church of St. Bunco. 

him," and to his establishment of " Truth " in 
wrong-thinking sick patients. As no such 
facts were presented, and as Mr. Arens had 
clearly plagiarized Mrs. Eddy, whatever she 
had done, the court properly decided that her 
" copyright " be " protected." In other words, 
the merits of the case were not involved, 
though the decision has given Mother Eddy a 
chance to say, with her usual candor and logic, 
that the failure of Arens " to produce his proof 
is conclusive evidence that no such proof ex- 
isted" 

Science and Health is a book of nearly seven 
hundred pages, containing somewhat less than 
two hundred thousand words; but this brief 
of Un-Christian Non-Science includes Mrs. 
Eddy's Key to the Scriptures. 

The eighty-second edition of " the precious 
volume " is the particular issue here elucidated. 
We shall make a few quotations from Science 
and Health, but only just enough to verify our 
criticism of it as a pretentious, untrue, and un- 
healthy book, which, in the interest of the pub- 
lic, needs to be exploded. For these quotations 
we shall give Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy full 
credit. It would be a crime, indeed, to accuse 



"The Precious Volume." 85 

any one else of originating such capsules of 
metaphysical ipecac. 

As laid down in Science and Health, the 
fundamental propositions of the mumbo-jumbo 
termed " Christian Science " are four in num- 
ber. 

First; God is All. 

Second; God is Good. Good is Mind. 

Third: God, Spirit, being All, nothing is 
matter. 

Fourth; Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny 
death, evil, sin, disease. Disease, sin, evil, 
death, deny Good, omnipotent God, life. 

Mrs. Eddy says that, to her, these are " self- 
evident propositions." They are proved, too, 
by " the rule of inversion." They are just as 
harmonious backward as forward. There is a 
little hitch in Number Four, which declares 
one way that God denies death, evil, sin, and 
disease, and the other way that these deny God. 
But this one exception to " the rule of inver- 
sion " only confirms it ; for, according to Scrip- 
ture, God is true, and " every [mortal] man a 
liar." 

For the corner-stone, then, of Eddyism, we 
have self-evident propositions — self-evident to 



86 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the mind of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy — and 
with these an appeal to Scripture. Truly 
enough this must be " Divine Science " ; for no 
rational creature of modern times can suspect 
it of being human science, whether true or 
false. But, says the great teacher of it, " no 
human pen or tongue taught me the science," 
and " neither tongue nor pen can overthrow 
it." Well, never mind the overthrow. But, 
when Mrs. Eddy tells us that " no human pen 
or tongue " taught her " the science of mind- 
healing," we are obliged to infer that Dr. 
Quimby was more than human. How greatly 
would the plain but gifted Quimby have been 
shocked, had he foreknown that Mrs. Eddy 
would thus apotheosize him. 

Through Science and Health we learn that 
" Christian Science " reveals, " incontroverti- 
ble" that "Mind is All-in-all"— the only 
" realities " being " the divine Mind and idea." 
We learn, further, that this divine Mind is 
God, that God's idea is Man, and that by au- 
thority of Webster an " idea " is an image in 
mind." 

It would be truly pitiable for any theologian, 
or indeed for any believer in a spirit-principle 



"The Precious Volume." 87 

of the cosmos, to attempt the " overthrow " of 
these venerable " revelations " now protected 
by Mrs. Eddy's copyright, but which were 
hoary with age even in the days of the Greek 
Academy. Barring Webster's definition of an 
idea, these " revelations " to Mrs. Eddy appear 
revealed in the Bible, though not copyrighted. 
As logical metaphysics, in recent times, Hegel 
reduced them to their utmost sublimation; 
and Hegel is excellent authority in many of our 
colleges, as well as with the good Dr. Harris, 
our United States Commissioner of Education 
at Washington. 

Let us say once more that there is no trouble 
in effecting a spiritual derivation of the uni- 
verse, except to our friends, " the materialists," 
who have themselves refined " matter " to 
things not much like it. The only trouble 
with an all-containing, all-pervading Spiritual 
Source of Existence, is in the funny havoc 
sometimes made of it by half-baked people, like 
" Christian Scientists." 

To Dr. Quimby, " Mind," or " Spirit " was 
the principle of all things. To him, Matter 
was a condition of Spirit — " an idea," he said, 
" reduced to a solid " — a " solid " meaning a 



88 The Church of St. Bunco. 

definite and real appearance to human sense. 
But this conception, which the old and regular 
school of metaphysicians have held for thou- 
sands of years, would not do for the genuine 
original " Mother of Christian Science" 
when she came to prescribe a dogma for the 
cure of all possible disease from leprosy to 
bunions. It was necessary, she thought, to 
have a stronger pill. She compounded it in the 
form that " matter," including the " mortal 
body," is not only " the objective state of the 
mortal mind," but that mortal mind is un- 
mixed, " error," entailing all sin, disease, and 
death. Yet " error " is really " nothing " ; or 
say something only to be denied. The duty of 
life, " in Science/' is to make this denial ef- 
fective. Matter, sin, disease, are absolute il- 
lusions and delusions of " mortal mind," 
which itself is just " error," to be wiped out. 
Now say so, and they are all gone. Or if 
they persist in seeming to be anywhere, be 
more firm with them. Sing the denial, as 
well as say it. Keep it up. Let noth- 
ing else intervene for a second. Let every 
paragraph you write be made of it. Give it 
ten thousand different forms, and each form 



"The Precious Volume." 89 

ten thousand variations. If you fully concen- 
trate your whole mind on this " divine " busi- 
ness, and pay the full price for learning it. you 
will elevate yourself into " perfect harmony " 
with " Immortal Mind." When you accom- 
plish this undertaking, impurity and evil, sin, 
disease and death, will disappear as the shadow 
of their original nothingness, which they al- 
ways are and ever were. 

Here is the whole real substance of " the 
precious volume," Science and Health, includ- 
ing Mrs. Eddy's marvelous Key to the Scrip- 
tures. Still, the holy tome has some interesting 
particulars. 

On opening it, and journeying only as far as 
page 2, one finds that, while " Christian Sci- 
ence " is copyrighted property, " the Divine 
Spirit " was the real author of it ; for Mrs. 
Eddy explicitly declares that through " Chris- 
tian Science " the Divine Spirit testified to her, 
and that the testimony unfolded her one basic, 
forever-echoed assumption that " matter " has 
nothing in it but " falsity." 

Next comes up the Platonic conception — 
which, unfortunately for Plato, he neglected to 
copyright — that the Principle of Mind, with 



§o The Church of St. Bunco. 

its reflection or " idea," constitutes the real 
universe. Mrs. Eddy pronounces this philo- 
sophical conception a scientific fact ; but it was 
not " proved to the senses " — which, by the 
way, never perceive anything but " error " — 
until " Christian Science revealed it." Then 
it was proved " incontrovertibly, absolutely 
and divinely," by repairing Mrs. Eddy's back 
after a fall on ice. 

From time immemorial, the history of phil- 
osophy has been familiar with the thought that 
the human body is a reflex and product of 
mind; a practical reality for all, earthly condi- 
tions and purposes, but resolvable, from the 
view of spirit, into simply an objective appear- 
ance. The thought, too, has been frequent in 
poetry. Three hundred years ago Spenser 
sang: 

" So every spirit, as it is more pure, 

And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For, of the soul, the body form doth lake, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make. 

Yet Mrs. Eddy claims this doctrine, too, as 
her " discovery," though, with her, it is not 



"The Precious Volume." 91 

merely " mind," but the " mortal " or "mis- 
named " article, that produces the body. All 
such " mind " is unalloyed " error," and the 
body, or apparition of this error, is another 
error. It was this " discovery," she says, that 
led to her infallible proposition, the all-inclu- 
siveness of Immortal Mind and the all-noth- 
ingness of matter, which she made the bed-rock 
of her all-healing " Science." 

Matter being Nothing, and our bodies being 
nothing but error, there is great use, notwith- 
standing, for the one genuine medicine, " Chris- 
tian Science." " Physical healing," with " men- 
tal healing " thrown in, is the large wholesale 
business of which Mother Eddy is proprietor 
and director. In the last analysis, according 
to the preface of Science and Health, this med- 
icine is " Divine Principle." Such a remedy 
naturally dispels the unfounded belief of mat- 
ter, the unfounded imaginings of sickness and 
sin, which drop out of supposed reality, and so 
out of existence. 

As the term " Christian Science " is neces- 
sarily suggestive of Christian history, even 
Mrs. Eddy has not quite claimed the whole 
product of Christianity as originating in Sci- 



92 The Church of St. Bunco. 

ence and Health. She does admit, with pious 
candor, that God imparted the spirit of Chris- 
tian Science to Jesus and the Apostles. But 
the letter is another thing. " The absolute let- 
ter " waited for Mary Baker G. Eddy ; and, 
were the blessed lady a living kaleidoscope, she 
could hardly add to the combinations and 
varieties in which she presents this claim to her 
readers. 

Eddyism proclaims One God, all-inclusive, 
whose highest title is " Immortal Mind." But, 
" in Science," this God, being all-inclusive, as 
Unity, Identity, and Goodness — so otherwise 
all-delusive — there is no room anywhere for a 
Devil, or say, rather, the recognition of one. 
If God is not only all, but all-good, no opposite 
to this principle can exist. However, there is 
" mortal mind," or " sense," with its image 
and creation, " matter," and in these are sin 
and disease. Still, mortal mind, matter, sin, 
disease, have no relation or reference to God." 
He " fills all Space."* They subsist neither by 



* This crude materialistic conception, of " God " as 
filling space," shows most beautifully the Kindergarten 
quality of Mother Eddy's "metaphysics." 



<< 



" The Precious Volume." 93 

His creation nor permission. Hence they can ■ 
not be — they are just naught. 

But hold! Christian Science, with Science 
and Health, being present avatars to dispel sin 
and cure disease, such a science and such a book 
necessarily admit sickness and sin, both im- 
plicitly and explicitly. Now what is to be done 
in such a dilemma? Why, mortal mind, mat- 
ter, evil, and all afflictions, while " nothing," 
are a kind of nothing that may be mentioned as 
" error " and ultimate " self-nullity." Thus, 
while Eddy Science, alias " Christian Science," 
has no real Devil, it has a very practical seem- 
ing Devil, and whips him from stump to stump 
with logic worse than himself. Finally, as he 
is not " substance," but " shadow," you knock 
him out by calling him names. 

But the doctrine of the Trinity, as " demon- 
strated in Science," is the best abstract of the 
Eddy theology. This Trinity consists of 
one self-identical " Father-and-Mother God " ; 
Man, " the Idea " or " Reflection" ; then Chris- 
tian Science, " the Holy Comforter." 

The position of man, as theologized by Mrs. 
Eddy, is, if anything, more terribly mixed than 
that of the Devil. Man is "the image of 



94 The Church of St. Bunco. 

God " ; but, as God is All, man has " no real 
individuality." He cannot have personality of 
his own, as God has no " separability." Still 
this " God's idea," named man, somehow takes 
on an imaginary state, named " mortal mind," 
and this imaginary state has a dream of error 
and misery named " Sense." Human individ- 
uality, mortal mind, and sense, are all, in real- 
ity, null and void. Man, however, being God's 
idea and reflection, can never lose his unpos- 
sessed " true self." The divine contradictions 
of Science and Health are here insurmountable. 
Let no man try to rationalize them. Mrs. Eddy 
well remarks in her Retrospection and In- 
trospection, that " Divine Science demands 
mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we 
sail into the eternal haven over the unfathom- 
able sea of possibilities." 

O Lord, how long ! 
Oh, bosh, how strong ! 

The fact is that any long-continued reading 
of Science and Health, with the innocence to 
imagine it either true, difficult or profound, is 
enough to turn a weak mind idiotic. To a 
trained thinker, the only danger from the book- 
is an attack of nausea or a hemorrhage from 
laughing. 



I< 



Key" To the Eddy Scripture. 95 



CHAPTER VII. 

" KEY " TO THE EDDY SCRIPTURE, SCIENCE AND 

HEALTH. 

Mrs. Eddy's Un-Christian Non-Science may 
be summarized as a caricature of her early, 
" New England Orthodoxy," crazily combined 
with New England Transcendentalism, coated 
with a kind of free-thought permissible only to 
her own " divine Science," all overlying Dr. 
Quimby's " Science of Health," and carefully 
put under copyright. 

Let us now see a few moonstone gems from 
her " precious volume " — just enough to illus- 
trate our criticism of it and not infringe on her 
monopolized territory. 

It may be explained, by the way, that the 
United States statute governing copyright pre- 
cludes the reproduction and sale of books and 
pamphlets, as wholes, without permission of the 
authors; and protects even parts of dramas, 
pictures, and other " works of art "—the intent 



96 The Church of St. Bunco. 

being, of course, to protect, also, one of vhe 
Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not steal." 
But, if an i ntrue and injurious book could not 
be analyzed, and a dozen extracts taken from it 
in proof of criticism, no literary quack could be 
exposed, in protection of the truth and the pub- 
lic. In that case, the Copyright Law would 
be worse than the old " Fugitive Slave Bill,*' 
and it would be a sacred duty to get into jail, 
if necessary, for violating it. Fortunately 
there is no such need. The law was not drawn 
in the interest of charlatans and malefactors, 
and has never been interpreted against the de- 
cencies of justice. 

Following " Mother " Eddy's example in 
connection with our quotations from her Sci- 
ence and Health, we shall interpret them in a 
strictly " scientific " light, as she, with miracu- 
lous nerve, in her Key to the Scriptures, has 
done with other sacred writings. Thus we 
shall illumine Science and Health in the same 
way that she has illumined Genesis and The 
Apocalypse. 

Science and Health, 7.*-—" In the year 1866 

* The figures stand for the pages referred to. 



"Key" To the Eddy Scripture. 97 

I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Heal- 
ing, and named it Christian Science. God had 
been graciously fitting me, during many years, 
for the reception of a final revelation of the ab- 
solute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing." 

Interpretation " in Science." — History re- 
veals to us, for sure, that " Mother Eddy," has 
always claimed to have discovered and founded 
the only genuine and original Christian Sci- 
ence. Though she was once a patient of Dr. 
P. P. Quimby, and at that time one Mary M. 
Patterson said that Quimby cured disease by 
mental truth — " the truth that Christ taught " 
— this miserable episode has nothing to do with 
the case. Mrs. Eddy has told us that the Pat- 
terson woman was a creature " ignorant " of 
" Science," whom Dr. Quimby used to " mes- 
merize." He cured her of a seven-years' com- 
plaint in the mortal body, but so addled her 
head that she had no knowledge of what she 
talked about. Thus, Mrs. Patterson's impres- 
sion that Dr. Quimby was the modern founder 
of mind-healing has no weight. The truth was 
not in her. But Mother Eddy, notwithstand- 
ing she herself was once that same Mrs. Pat- 
terson, discovered all truth and all iscience, 
7 



98 The Church of St. Bunco. 

without regard to any of her previous state- 
ments. 

Science and Health, 453. — " A Christian 
Scientist needs my work on Science and Health 
for his textbook, and so do all his students and 
patients. . . . It is the voice of Truth to 
this age, and contains the whole of Christian 
Science, or the Science of healing through 
Mind. ... It was the first published book 
containing a statement of Christian Science. 
... It registered this revealed Truth, uncon- 
taminated with human hypotheses. Other 
works, which have borrowed from this book 
without giving it credit, have adulterated the 
Science." 

Interpretation "in Science." — It is evident 
that everybody " in Science " should buy its 
real Bible, Science and Health; for the Old and 
the New Testament, while it is policy to use 
them in the Church Scientist, are in dreadful 
need of exegesis by Mary Baker G. Eddy. 
She is the one religious person, altogether 
scientific, that now exists in the world. She is 
" uncontaminated truth," and anything that 
interferes with her abets larceny and spreads 
leprosy. Moreover, it is a financial crime 



" Key " To the Eddy Scripture. 99 

against her, conducive to heart-disease. Let it 
again be stated that " the precious volume," 
Science and Health, is cheap for cash, ranging 
from only $3.18 to $6. 

Science and Health, Pref. VIII. — " The 
question, What is Truth ? is answered by dem- 
onstration — by healing disease and sin." 

Interpretation " in Science." — That truth 
can only be set on its absolute end by curing 
megrims and other unhealthiness, has been in- 
controvertibly settled by the religious experi- 
ence of " Mother Eddy " herself. When she 
rose into the revelation that matter is noth- 
ing — not even a phenomenal condition of any- 
thing — the truth instantly spliced her broken 
spine. It was this " demonstration by heal- 
ing " that transformed the ignorant, deluded, 
mesmerized Mary M. Patterson, into our holy, 
scientific, infallible Lady of the " Precious 
Volume." 

Science and Health, 2 and 3, passim. — "The 
divine Spirit, testifying through Christian 
Science, unfolded to me the demonstrable fact 
that matter possesses neither sensation nor life. 
. . . Human experiences show the falsity of 
all material things. . . . My discovery that 



ioo The Church of St. Bunco. 

erring, mortal, misnamed mind, produces all 
the organism and action of the mortal body, 
led up to my demonstration that Mind is All, 
and matter is naught, as the leading factor in 
Mind-Science. . . . The revelation of Truth 
in the understanding came to me gradually, 
and apparently through divine power. When 
a new spiritual idea is borne to earth, the pro- 
phetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly ful- 
filled : ' Unto us a child is born. . . . and his 
name shall be Wonderful.' " 

Interpretation " in Science." — That there is 
absolutely nothing in anything you see, feel, 
hear, taste or smell, is eternally laid down as 
" the leading factor in Mind-Science." Though 
the ideas of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy are all 
wonderful, this is the most surpassingly won- 
derful of all. But Mother Eddy herself is 
much more wonderful than even her ideas. 
As little Mary Baker she was wonderful in her 
likeness to little Samuel; as Mary M. Patter- 
son, she was more wonderful as a mesmerized 
victim of Dr. Quimby ; and, as Mary Baker G % 
Eddy, she is most wonderful, as the Ark of the 
Covenant of the only true Medicinal Religion. 



" Key " To the Eddy Scripture, ioi 

All Mother Eddy's writings point, all the time, 
to this beautiful lesson. 

Science and Health, 5. — " No analogy exists 
between the vague hypotheses of Agnosticism, 
or Millenarianism, and the demonstrable truths 
of Christian Science; and I find the will, or 
sensuous reason of the human mind, to be op- 
posed to the divine Mind, expressed through 
Divine Science/' 

Interpretation " in Science." — All the an- 
cient and modern " isms," except Eddyism, we 
must sit on and blot out. The most of them 
are unpopular, and don't bring us in anything. 
But he who opposes Eddyism contradicts the 
Divine Mind, expressed through Divine Sci- 
ence, which, logically, must be the production 
of our Divine Mother. 

Science and Health, 8 — " The phrase mor- 
tal mind implies something untrue, and, there- 
fore, unreal." 

Interpretation " in Science." — This truth is 
to be taken as infallible on all occasions. Still, 
the unreality, mortal mind, is a thing to be 
healed by Christian Science, and there is 
money in the metaphysical pills. 
- Science and Health, 21. — " There is no 



102 The Church of St. Bunco. 

physical science, inasmuch, as all true Science 
proceeds from divine Intelligence. 

Interpretation " in Science!' — Shut up your 
arithmetic, geometry, physics, and astronomy. 
They amount to nothing. There is no truly 
scientific book except Science and Health. 

Science and Health, 25. — " Must Christian 
Science come through the Christian churches, 
as some insist ? This Science has come already, 
and come through the one whom God called/' 

Interpretation " in Science." — Christian Sci- 
ence, my beloved, is copyrighted property, and 
can only spread through the owner and her 
deputies. The " one whom God called " is 
Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. 

Science and Health, 244, 245, 473, 284. — 
" The act of describing disease makes the 
disease. Warning people against disease 
frightens them into it. This obnoxious habit 
ought to cease. . . . The unscientific practi- 
tioner says : ' You are ill ; you must rest.' 
Science objects to all this. . . . Mind con- 
trols the body and brain. ... A cup of tea 
is not the equal of Truth. ... A material 
body is a mortal belief. . . . The medicine of 
Science is divine Mind." 



"Key" To the Eddy Scripture. 103 

Interpretation "in Science." — Your doctor 
is a fool, whether he be allopathic, homeopathic, 
magnetic, or even of any unauthorized school 
of mind-healing. Dismiss him, and send for 
a Christian Science M. D., authorized to prac- 
tise by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. If he can't 
cure you, it will not be his fault; it will be 
simply because your mind, or the minds around 
you, or both, are out of tune with Science and 
Health and its Key to the Scriptures. 

Science and Health, 259, 480, 475. — " Elec- 
tricity, the offspring of finite mind, is unreal. 
. . .The physical universe expresses the con- 
scious and unconscious thoughts of mortals. 
Physical force and mortal mind are one. . . . 
Matter is neither self-existent nor a product 
of Spirit. An image of mortal thought, re- 
flected on the retina, is all the eye beholds." 

Interpretation " in Science." — That a force 
like electricity has no reference to any princi- 
ple or power but finite mind, will always be 
hard for an unscientized person to believe. But 
Mother Eddy knows, and her word must go. 
Still, the unreality of electricity is not quite so 
to people " out of science." If one toys with a 
trolley-wire before he has read and understood 



104 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Science and Health, he may experience a slight 
shock of reality, if he lives long enough. But 
one who has purchased Mrs. Eddy's great 
work, and who reads it constantly, need have 
no fear of electrocution, or anything else. His 
mortal mind has pretty nearly departed from 
him. His " physical universe " is hardly a pic- 
ture of " conscious thoughts," and his " uncon- 
scious thoughts," whatever such things may be, 
will never lead him into much danger. 

Science and Health, 487. — " Science reveals 
material man as a dream at all times, and 
never as the real Being." 

Interpretation u in Science/' — Mortals 'are 
nothing. The One and Only Being is the 
Father-and-Mother God of Christian Science. 
Our Mother is Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. 

Science and Health, 411. — "The Scientist 
knows there can be no hereditary disease, since 
matter cannot transmit good or evil intelli- 
gence to man, and Mind produces no pain in 
matter." 

Interpretation " in Science." — On the 
ground that mind and matter are absolutely un- 
connected, there can be no doubt of there being 
no hereditary disease. On the same ground 



"Key" To the Eddy Scripture. 105 

there can be no heredity itself, and no world 
for heredity to exist in. How true it is, " in 
Science," that all actuality has no actuality inj 
it! 

Science and Health, 28. — " The true Logos 
is demonstrably Christian Science." 

Interpretation "in Science. 3 ' — We know, 
too, from Mrs. Eddy's " precious volume," 
that Christian Science, in addition to being the 
Logos, is the Holy Comforter. Thus her 
copyrighted religion is two-thirds of the 
Trinity. 

Science and Health, 411. — "The daily ab- 
lutions of an infant are no more natural or 
necessary than would be the process of taking a 
fish out of water every day, and covering it 
with dirt, in order to make it thrive more vig- 
orously thereafter in its native element. 
. . . Water is not the natural habitat of hu- 
manity." 

Interpretation " in Science." — Don't take the 
trouble to wash the baby. His body is only an 
expression of mortal mind, and is thus so 
mussed up with error and nothingness that 
water will never get him clean. His proper 
habitat is " Science." Scrub his " conscious 



106 The Church of St. Bunco. 

and unconscious thoughts " with Christian Sci- 
ence, and never mind the rest of him. 

We shall make but one more quotation, here, 
from Mrs. Eddy's " Divine comedy/' Science 
and Health. There is no use of being too se- 
rious with it. History will soon take it 
as mostly a " grim joke " on metaphysics, the- 
ology, and medicine. But one thing must 
give us pause. On approaching the Lord's 
Prayer, one feels himself on solemn ground, 
if such ground there be anywhere in life, 
and for once, if never before, puts on the 
mantle of conservatism. But, to Mrs. Eddy, 
the words of Jesus in devotion and sup- 
plication — at once the simplest and grand- 
est words ever uttered — require her " spiritual 
interpretation." What, in her index to Science 
and Health, she terms the " Spiritualized ver- 
sion " of the Lord's Prayer is this : 

" Our Father and Mother God, all-harmon- 
ized, Adorable One. Ever present and Om- 
nipotent. Thy Supremacy appears as matter 
disappears. Give us grace for to-day; Thou 
fillest the famished affections; and Love is re- 
flected in love. And leavest us not in temp- 
tation, but freest us from sin, disease and 



a 



Key" To the Eddy Scripture. 107 



death ; for Thou art all Substance, Life, Truth, 
and Love, forever. — So be it." 

The author of the English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers tells of a poet who 

" Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke, 
And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch ; 
And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms, 
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the psalms.' ' 

Let any one not " in Science " ask himself 
if Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy has not gone farther 
and done worse. 



io8 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



" CHRISTIAN-SCIENCE " ORGANIZING FORCES. 



As Mrs. Eddy has been a manufacturer and 
vender of " Christian Science" for a compara- 
tively short time — only a quarter of a century 
— many good people who knew her at the in- 
ception of that successful industry are still on 
earth, in an active condition of " mortal mind." 
They have volunteered to furnish for this brief 
book a variety of plain and ornamental infor- 
mation that is not essential to it. But, in jus- 
tice to history and biography, one point must 
not be omitted. They all agree that " Mother 
Eddy," like Caesar, the Standard Oil Com- 
pany, and the Sugar Trust, has more organiz- 
ing capacity than " the sons and daughters of 
God," to use her own phrase, generally possess. 
With this capacity, it is also agreed that never 
a Bonaparte, never a Jay Gould, never a Pier- 



" Christian-Science " Forces. 109 

pont Morgan, could be more handy in sur- 
mounting all over-nice impediments to practi- 
cal success. 

Thus by her rare combination of terrestrial 
and celestial genius, " Mother Eddy " has been 
able to hold her copyrighted religion, " Chris- 
tian Science," strictly under her personal reg- 
nancy, and direct it to the highest financial, 
doctrinal, and healing ends. She permits no 
tinge of private judgment, no stain of unau- 
thorized opinion, and no mere finite criticism, 
so far as she can silence it. She is the Church, 
and membership is obedience. Hence she bit- 
terly antagonizes all independent agencies of 
scientific salvation, though with eyes rolled up, 
and with fervent proclamations of unbounded 
" love." In her Science and Health, she ad- 
vises her readers not to read other " scientific 
works," as they are full of " materialism," and 
are not " Scientifically Christian." Directly or 
indirectly, too, there is always the point that 
money can be much better invested in Mrs. 
Eddy's own " sacred " and " positively demon- 
strated " writings. It would almost seem that, 
in her universal motherhood, Mrs. Mary Baker 
G. Eddy must have borne Mohammed's great 



no The Church of St. Bunco. 

soldier who burned the Alexandrian library in 
devotion to the Koran. 

To a great organizer, a wholesale business 
is always more attractive than retail trade. It 
is handled quite as easily, with less detail, and 
thousands of small merchants contribute to the 
proceeds. The able founder of " Christian 
Science " early realized this fact — in her case 
drawn from on high, but sometimes reached 
through commercial experience. Having re- 
tired into the wilderness of her mind, far from 
all monitions of " sense " ; having trained her 
memory to forget the existence of " matter," 
" error," and Mary M. Patterson ; having taken 
a three-years' vacation with her only peers, 
" the ancient worthies " and " the Scriptures " ; 
Mrs. Eddy came back at last, among the hu- 
man species, with the metaphysics and curative 
formulas of " Christian Science." Then came 
practical transactions in " revelations " and 
" mental medicine," which soon rivaled the 
sales of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup and 
Lydia Pinkham's celebrated compound. 

Though Mrs. Eddy has gradually taken 
into her service various literary experts, theo- 
logico-commercial travelers and metaphysical 



" Christian-Science " Forces. in 

auctioneers, she has always supervised, in per- 
son, the wholesale department of " Christian 
Science." On her return from the skies, she 
brought down a large collection of documents 
in which " the whole science " was condensed 
and canned, and all the medical prescriptions 
required to fulfil a millennium of holiness and 
health. With these documents in hand she 
formed classes of " loyal students," her defini- 
tion of " loyalty " being " allegiance to God " 
(as manifested in Mary Baker) ; " subordina- 
tion of the human " (the student) " to the di- 
vine " (the teacher) ; " steadfast justice " (no 
wobbling over the cash) ; and strict adherence 
to "divine Truth and Love" (the Mother of 
the Logos and the Holy Comforter forever 
glorified). 

To be more specific, it was in the year 1867 
that Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Patterson, 
freed by divorce from the last-named culprit, 
and married to Asa Gilbert Eddy, began, as 
she records it, the teaching of " Christian 
Science Mind Healing " to " one student." 
Here was a good seed sown in fructifying 
ground; for, in 188 1, it had grown to be " The 



H2 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Massachusetts Metaphysical College " of Bos- 
ton.* 

This vast institution was managed by Mrs. 
Eddy as chief impartress of " science," her as- 
sistants being her husband, her adopted son, 
and a General Bates. These four " scientists " 
constituted the faculty. 

Mrs. Eddy's last husband is described, by 
those who knew him, as one of the most hum- 
ble and obedient men that ever blest a perfect 
woman in immaculate matrimony. His value 
as a college professor may be inferred from 
one reminiscence of him. His supreme better- 
half once sued a poor young doctor who had 
fallen away from " science," and taken to hom- 
eopathy, that she might collect her fee for hav- 
ing taught him " Christian Science therapeu- 
tics." Her husband, Asa, was a witness for 
her, to prove the pecuniary value of her instruc- 
tion, and was asked, among other questions, 

" What is Man? " " As near as I can make it 
out," replied Prof. Eddy, " Man is an image." 
Mrs. Eddy lost her case, as the court was too 
unspiritual to reduce her " metaphysics " to 

* Retrospection and Introspection y p. 51. 



" Christian-Science " Forces. 113 

dollars and cents.* But the good Asa showed 
that he was an ' image " of Mary ; and, in 
her Retrospection and Introspection, she has 
gratefully embalmed his memory in a text from 
the Psalms. 

" Mark the perfect man, and behold the up- 
right : for the end of that man is peace." 

The italics are not in the psalm, but are 
Mary's. 

Some further conception of " the perfect 
man," Prof. Eddy, and the value of Mother 
Eddy's estimate of him, may be gathered from 
an item which appeared in the Boston Evening 
Herald of December 7, 1878, stating that 
" Edward J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy were in- 
dicted to-day by the Grand Jury for soliciting 
James H. Sargent to kill Daniel H. Spofford." 
It appears that Spofford, in order to probe the 
matter, led on the conspiracy, and so became 
technically involved in it himself. Thus the 
affair became so mixed up that, according to 
the official court-record, the District Attorney 
concluded not to prosecute the indictment, and 

* These facts are well remembered and well recorded. 
They were of special interest to such of Mrs. Eddy's 
•' loyal students " as had seceded from her cult. — G. C. 
8 



H4 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Arens and Eddy were " discharged on payment 
of costs." The divine " Mother Eddy " surely 
could not have instigated a conspiracy to mur- 
der Spofford (a troublesome backslider from 
" Science "), though he and many other back- 
sliders, who know her well, have long labored 
under the impression that the whole enterprise 
was hers. 

The human head is a queer bulb, and often 
seems to be a direct evolution from the squash. 
This hypothesis, illustrated by the researches 
of Darwin and his school, accounts for the 
rapid growth of Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts 
Metaphysical College from 1881 to 1889, when, 
in the latter year, she closed it. At that time, 
as she recollects things, her college was not 
only filled, but " flooded " with students from 
all parts of America, Europe, and the world. 
Three hundred applications were on the list, 
and the number was rapidly increasing.* 

If Mrs. Eddy were not so far above the 
world and the flesh that her reasons for things 
seldom comport with a sub-lunar search into 
them, it might be possible to believe that she 
discontinued her college because she feared that 
* Retrospection and Introspection t p. 57. 



" Christian-Science " Forces. 115 

" material organization," applied to " Chris- 
tian Science," would obstruct " Love's Spirit- 
ual compact/ ' Whatever it means, this at 
least is what she says. The success of her col- 
lege had shown her the danger of placing peo- 
ple on " earthly pinnacles " ; and even " mortal 
mind " can see that such a setting-up might 
lead students away from the primal Mother 
and the central contribution-box. Besides, she 
had always had " conscientious scruples " 
against " giving diplomas " when she thought 
of those same " earthly pinnacles. ,, 

It may throw some light on the sudden clos- 
ing of " The Massachusetts* Metaphysical Col- 
lege " to note that, notwithstanding " Mother " 
Eddy's " conscientious scruples " against grant- 
ing mere " diplomas," she had issued hundreds 
of metaphysico-medical degrees at high prices. 

According to a statement of hers, she ob- 
tained her college charter from the State of 
Massachusetts in 1881, "with the right to 
grant degrees." But the act on which this 
grant was based was repealed in 1882. Then, 
in 1883, the conferring of " any diploma or 
degree " by any " corporation " or " associa- 
tion," was made a legal offense, punishable by a 



n6 The Church of St. Bunco. 

fine of not less than $500. Being the " presi- 
dent/' not of any " corporation " or " associa- 
tion," but of a regular " college " (with a fac- 
ulty of three beside herself), Mother Eddy's 
legal mind has held that this law, if aimed at 
her, failed; to hit, though it knocked outallother 
mind-healing colleges.* But, in 1889, when, as 
persistent rumor has it, the problem was about 
to be solved by legal process against " Mother 
Eddy," the subject was practically closed by 
the closing of her " college," and by her retire- 
ment to New Hampshire, where " the wicked 
cease from troubling and the weary are at 
rest." 

Considering Mrs. Eddy's kind of " college- 
faculty " and " board," together with her ex- 
haustive copyrights and the 'hierarchical mon- 
opolies consequent upon them, it is quite con- 
ceivable that when time was ripe she had no 
difficulty in " unanimously " passing resolu- 
tions to discontinue her " flourishing school." 
The little joker in this pack of resolutions soon 
came out in one of them. It deftly touched 
the matter of " organization," and then pro- 

* See Christian Science History, by Septimus J. Hanna, 
p. 42. 



" Christian-Science " Forces. 117 

pounded that " the hour " had " come " when 
" the great need " was for " more of the 
Spirit/' not " the letter," and that Science and 
Health was the spirit's nutriment. 

It is not directly stated by Mother Eddy in 
this connection, that God Himself fixed the 
scale of prices 1 for her book ; but she does say it 
was " God " who " impelled " her to " set a 
price " for her " instruction in Christian- 
Science Mind-Healing." The price was three- 
hundred dollars- a head, for a college course 
of three weeks. At first she " shrank from 
asking it." But " a strange providence " led 
Mary to these terms, and " God," she asserts, 
" has since shown " her, in " multitudinous 
ways," the " wisdom " of her " decision."* 
The " strange providence " and " the multitu- 
dinous ways " are not explained by her ; but 
the " wisdom " of gathering together fat bank- 
deposits is unanimously acknowledged in the 
Church Scientist. 

When our republic was a hundred years old, 
it had become worthy of having " The First 
Christian Science Association." That body 

* For this amazing snivel see Retrospection and In- 
trospection, p. 61. 



n8 The Church of St. Bunco. 

was accordingly organized, on the fourth day 
of July, 1876, by Mrs. Eddy and six of her 
head-light reflectors. Three years later, the 
Association balloted on forming a Church, and 
the Eddyites won by a large plurality. Rev. 
Mary Baker G. Eddy was of course chosen its 
" first pastor,'' and during her ministration it 
prospered in numbers and popularity. That 
is, she says so in her Retrospection and Intro- 
spection. But owing to tons of work, which 
increased upon her, she was unable to give the 
Church sufficient attention, and no son or 
daughter of " Science " was competent to take 
her place. Her church was " envied " and 
" molested " by other churches, and there was 
danger of " Christian warfare " — which might 
have led to a diminution of proselytes, and more 
horrible still, a loss, of shekels. In such an 
extremity, she " recommended " the dissolu- 
tion of the First Church Scientist, and again, 
as ever, her recommendation went through 
" without a dissenting voice." 

" This measure," she tells us, was followed 
by " a great revival " in the way of " mutual 
love," with " spiritual power " and " prosper- 
ity." Those, we may be sure, were mone^ 



" Christian-Science " Forces. 119 

making times. Mrs. Eddy's reasons for dis- 
solving her church were doubtless infallible. 
Still, that same church at once resurrected it- 
self and exalted its horn — the " Mother 
Church " in Boston, and then children and 
grandchildren galore, in hundreds of secondary 
" Hubs " and their suburbs. 



120 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ONE TRUE " MOTHER CHURCH." * 

It was in 1889, says Mrs. Eddy, that " I 
gave a lot of land in Boston," on which to 
erect " a church edifice " as " a temple for 
Christian Science worship." f The land, she is 
particular to say, was worth " twenty thousand 
dollars," and was " rising in value." As she 
has been careful to mention this increment of 
the " rise " — not hiding it under a bushel, but 
setting it on top of the cover — we must be 
sure to add it to the sum of the original be- 
nevolence. 

But how much labor could be saved by a 
meek historian if only Mrs. Eddy's word could 
ever be safely accepted without looking be- 

* This chapter is written mostly from personal inspec- 
tion and knowledge. An elaborate description of the 
Church is given in The Christian Science Journal for 
January, 1895. — G. C. 

f Retrospection and Introspection , page 62. 



"Mother Church." 121 

hind it ! On consulting the official registry of 
such matters, one finds that before Mrs. Eddy 
gave her land to the Church of Christ Scientist, 
the Church itself owned the land, under a 
mortgage of nine thousand dollars, four thou- 
sand of which had been paid off. The balance 
was five thousand. The provident " Mother " 
bought this mortgage and foreclosed it. She 
then conveyed the property to the trustees of 
the First Church of Christ Scientist, reserving 
the right to re-enter and repossess the land, 
with improvements, in case a church erected on 
it should not be run to suit her. All this was 
specified in ten conditions, which the angels 
have not recorded in her biography. 

Adjoining the Eddy castle of " metaphysics " 
are two lots on which stand two buildings of 
the Christian Science Publishing Society. This 
real estate was set down in February, 1 898, by 
the editor of " The Christian Science Journal,' ' 
to be worth not less than twenty-two thousand 
dollars. On January 25th, 1898, "Mother" 
Eddy generously conveyed it to the First 
Church of Christ Scientist. But, three days 
before — on the 21st of January, 1898 — the 
Christian Science Publishing Society, for the 



122 The Church of St. Bunco. 

sum of one dollar, had conveyed it to her. The 
string tied to her reconveyance was that she 
should " have and occupy so much room con- 
veniently and pleasantly located " in the es- 
tablishment, as might " be necessary to carry 
on the publication and sale " of her " books " 
and " literature " — a reservation of " room " 
which, under legal stress might easily be inter- 
preted to mean the whole thing — it being dis- 
tinctively a " publishing house." 

With Mother Eddy's donation of January 
25th, 1898, she threw in " The Christian Sci- 
ence Journal " and " all the literary publica- 
tions of the Society " — these having been 
turned over to her with other things, for one 
dollar, on January 21st, 1898 — she saving to 
herself " only the right to copyright the * Jour- 
nal ' in her own name — an excellent way to 
make it self-supporting, with no liability on her 
part to incur its debts, while yet she could 
hold it under her absolute dictation. 

" Let us endeavor," says the editor of " The 
Christian Science Journal" (February, 1898), 
to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to God . . . 
and to his servant, our Mother in Israel, for 
these evidences of a generosity and self-sacri- 



"Mother Church." 123 

fice that appeal to our deepest sense of grati- 
tude, even while surpassing our compre- 
hension." 

Now such an evidence of generosity and 
self-sacrifice may intelligibly " surpass " the 
" comprehension " of any stipendary of Mrs. 
Eddy' paid to write such stuff as the fore- 
going; but Mary Baker Eddy's real bounty, 
generosity, self-sacrifice and benefaction, con- 
sisted in cancelling a mortgage of five thou- 
sand dollars, by which, on land thus obtained, 
a church costing other people two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars was soon built to her 
glory, she keeping a Shylock grip on the land, 
church and the adjacent property of her func- 
tionaries, with all its appurtenances that were 
good for anything. 

When " Mother Eddy " casts a loaf of bread 
upon the waters, it is always safe to look for a 
hundred loaves on the way back to her. 

" The First Church Scientist " — the edifice 
erected on Mrs. Eddy's donation of land — is a 
handsome structure of rough granite, looking 
something like a small armory with a big 
tower. This sacred castle of " metaphysics " 
is situated a little on the outskirts of residential 



124 The Church of St. Bunco. 

fashion in the Hub-City, the district thereof 
being the Back Bay. It is accessible to the 
world, when once in Boston, by " the electrics " 
and a short walk. As a place of scientifico-re- 
ligious assemblage, the building seats twelve 
hundred actual " scientists " in the flesh, and 
the sympathetic spirits of some twelve thou- 
sand other " members," absent throughout the 
country. On this account, some Eddyites who 
have never seen it regard its size as rivaling 
that of the earth. 

The Cathedral (scientist) has much stained 
glass, and on nearly every window is depicted 
some Mary; for all good Marys, particularly 
the Marys of the Bible, inferentially point to 
Mary Baker Eddy. This Mary's Science and 
Health is exceedingly prominent in the multi- 
colored glass, and so gives countenance to all 
the representations taken from the Scriptures. 

An organ is prominent— a large, harmonious 
present from a gentleman who thinks that 
somebody was cured of something by Chris- 
tian Science. 

The church has two pretty pulpits side by 
side, from one of which the Bible is read, 
while from the other, that ancient book is kept 



"Mother Church." 125 

straight by the reading of its only true meaning 
from Science and Health. 

Singing the praises of " Immortal Mind," 
as discovered by Mrs. Eddy, constitutes a part 
of the services, but there is no preaching — 
which is just as well, perhaps, but needs a word 
of explanation. 

Preaching used to be allowed " in Science " ; 
but some of Mother Eddy's apostles, having 
just enough knowledge for their creed, yet 
great gifts of speech, sermonized, it is said, 
with such honest zeal that their eloquence was 
in danger of casting an unglorifled shadow on 
the Mother herself. It must be stated, indeed, 
that sundry who have listened to St. Mary 
(scientist) affirm that her divine pen has al- 
ways been much more potent than her divine 
tongue. And some go so far as to declare that 
her sermons, when she preached, were often 
dull to the non-elect, even if they cured every 
disease within ten miles of them. However 
these things may have been, Mrs. Eddy, early 
in 1895, issued the following ecclesiastical 
edict :* 

* Published in the Christian Science Journal of April, 
1895. 



126 The Church of St. Bunco. 

" Humbly, and as I believe divinely di- 
rected, I hereby ordain that the Bible and 
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures 
shall hereafter be the only pastor of the Church 
of Christ, Scientist, throughout our land, and 
in other lands." 

This edict prevented Mrs. Eddy's theological 
subordinates from setting themselves up on 
" earthly pinnacles." Mother Eddy at the 
same time decreed this : 

" No copies of my books are allowed to be 
written, and read from manuscript, either in 
private, or in public assemblies, except by their 
author." 

She included the commmandent that 

" The reader of Science and Health with 
Key to the Scriptures, shall commence by an- 
nouncing the full title of this book, with the 
name of the author, and afterwards repeat at 
each reading its abbreviated title." 

Directions followed regarding classes in 
" Christian Science " — the number of pupils 
each teacher might instruct, and the annual 
number of classes — all to be taught " from 
the Christian Science text-book." 

Thus " Mother " Eddy's edict of 1895, abol- 



" Mother Church." 127 

ishing pulpiteers "in Science," while it re- 
dounded widely to her own glory, piously 
amplified, also, the proceeds of her " precious 
volume,' ' Science and Health. But to the in- 
nocent lambkins of her church, she said : 

" Teaching Christian Science shall be no 
question of money, but of morals and uplift- 
ing the race." 

So that lovely bird, the ostrich, still buries 
her head in the sand, but leaves out much that 
ornaments the landscape. 

In a rounded corner of the First Church 
Scientist, but conspicuous from the main pas- 
sage, is a little apartment celebrated as " The 
Mother's Room." There is no use of men- 
tioning the Mother Church " in Science," with- 
out dwelling on " The Mother's Room." 
It is never done, especially by any " Scientist." 
The Church is holy, throughout ; but that room 
is the demonstrated environment of Immortal 
Mind. 

The entrance to " The Mother's Room " is 
through a white-marble arch, lustrous to be- 
hold. Over the door, cut into the marble, is 
the inscription, " Love." It is not " love of 
money," or "love of flattery," but jtfst 



128 The Church of St. Bunco. 

" Love/' On the floor of the entrance we read 
in mosaic : " Mother's Room. The children's 
offering " — which signifies that Mother Eddy- 
knows how to attract the pennies of little 
Scientists as well as the dollars of her larger 
infants. 

As you enter the room, you tread on white- 
marble mosaic, sprayed with figs and fig- 
leaves, and you feel an emanation of pale green 
and old rose. If you know your business, you 
are struck with awe on being in this holy-of- 
holies. 

On your right is a mantel of white Italian 
marble and gold, with an open fireplace, where- 
in to throw all your mortal thoughts, that they 
may be consumed. Opposite the mantel on 
your left, is a rather large painting, set back in 
the wall, but well lighted by electricity and 
divine science. It shows the sacred chair in 
which Mrs. Eddy sat when she wrote Science 
and Health. The chair is empty — as typical, 
perhaps, of her departure from Boston when 
she closed her " Metaphysical College." As 
Mrs. Eddy has no need of a table when she 
writes, but can perform miracles of literature 
on a pad, the picture shows this phenomenon. 



" Mother Church/' 129 

Sheets of her manuscript are scattered on the 
floor, illustrating the logical chaos which fills 
them. 

A part of " The Mother's Room " is fenced 
off by a ribbon, to protect a rug made from the 
downy breasts of five hundred eider-ducks. 
The legend, as told by the guide, is that " no 
man's hand ever touched this rug." It is sa- 
cred to the Mother's immaculate foot. But 
it was not manufactured by the Audubon 
Society. 

A beautiful showcase, of white and gold, 
ornaments the room, and in it are the white 
and gold editions of Mrs. Eddy's works. They 
are samples of what you can buy at the regular 
price, and are very tempting to wealthy 
'* scientists." 

The Mother's room has a gorgeous bay-win- 
dow, or three windows in one, of stained glass. 
The Mother herself is there, searching the 
Scriptures, encircled by a halo from the star 
of Bethlehem. The Christian Science seal is 
emblazoned on the window, and a little girl is 
there, reading Science and Health to an old 
man. The little girl must be Mary Baker and 
the old man, probably, is Moses or Abraham. 
9 



130 The Church of St. Bunco. 

An alabaster bee-hive must not be forgotten, 
which contains the names of the little busy 
bees " in Science " — those children who 
squeezed out the cash to construct the room. 

As you turn and go out, you observe, on the 
right, an alcove, which contains a folding bed, 
to be pulled out into the main room in case of 
use; for the alcove itself is almost as small as 
a mind that disagrees with Mrs. Eddy. 

At your left — still going out — there is a 
toilet-room, corresponding to the alcove, but 
on the other side- of the arch and doorway. In 
practical construction, this toilet-room is very 
much like other small inclosures adapted to the 
same ends. The chief difference, here, is that 
all the water-pipes, faucets, and such fixtures, 
are plated with gold. Thus Mother Eddy's 
lavatory proudly reminds her of Solomon's 
temple at Jerusalem. 

It is said that " Mother Eddy " has never 
slept in " The Mother's Room " but once. This 
one occasion, however, was quite enough to 
sanctify it forever. 



A Martyr to " Science." 131 



CHAPTER X. 



A MARTYR TO "SCIENCE." 



" Christian Science," though its span be 
brief, has produced one of the most exceptional 
martyrs that ever lived and prospered. It is 
a woman, of course; for men, as a rule, have 
now become too " mortal-minded " for sac- 
rificial victims. 

The lady referred to is a Mrs. Josephine C. 
Woodbury. Boston is her habitat. She was 
long a follower of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, 
and was a preacher of the gospel, Science and 
Health. She talked and prayed, she wrote and 
traveled, all " in Science," until she became 
a public personage, celebrated throughout the 
dominions of the Eddyites. Then at last there 
was " War in Heaven " — which is the title 
of one of Mrs. Woodbury's books,* and she 

* War in Heaven : Sixteen Years' 1 Experience in 
Christian Science, Mind-Healing . By Josephine Curtis 
Woodbury. Third Edition. Boston, Mass. Press of 
Samuel Usher, 1897. 



132 The Church of St. Bunco. 

was excommunicated from the Mother Church 
Scientist of the Boston Back Bay. 

Now Mrs. Woodbury is not a lady who can 
be excommunicated from a church without 
giving that church fair returns for the outlay. 
Mrs. Woodbury has a pen, and there is black 
ink on it. She has attorneys quick to exchange 
legal process for bank notes redeemable in gold. 
The lady has turned her pen against " Mother 
Eddy," and cast ink-spots on the " Mother's " 
religion, not to say her personal character. The 
Woodbury lawyers have been let loose upon 
" the Mother " to sue for ethical redress and 
monetary damages.* 

Mrs. Woodbury entered " Science " very 
young — a fact on account of which let us ex- 
cuse her, as well as we can, for ever entering 
it at all. She thought she was one of the 
" healed " in the Eddy faith, and, later, she 
imagined that her reading a passage or two 

* Several suits are pending as this book goes to press. 
One suit has been " thrown out of court." It should be said, 
perhaps, that one of Mrs. Woodbury's attorneys, F. W. Pea- 
body, Esq., has such an abhorrence of " Christian Science n 
in general, that he has been willing to take the part of any- 
body who could enable him to expose Mrs. Eddy. In this 
good work may he not be discouraged. 



A Martyr to " Science/' 133 

from Science and Health snatched one of her 
children from the jaws of death. Her War in 
Heaven tells us this story, and it may do no 
harm to trust it is true. 

Mrs. Woodbury has the reputation of never 
doing things by halves, but of attending to 
business religiously, and of attending to reli- 
gion in a business way. Having once entered 
" Christian Science," she pursued that voca- 
tion with great metaphysical and financial suc- 
cess, until suddenly, on the 4th of April, 1896, 
came the bolt of excommunication. 

It can readily be understood that conven- 
tional respectability is a necessary anci profita- 
ble department of " The Eddy Church Scien- 
tist," and that so shifty an ecclesiastic as 
" Mother Eddy " can scent opprobrium from 
afar. Whereto applies certain " Christian- 
Science " history. 

Soon after the excommunication of the 
apostle Josephine — the latter part of the same 
year — she was attacked at law by a Mr. Fred 
D. Chamberlain, in the sum of twenty-five 
thousand dollars, on the charge that she had 
alienated the affection and companionship of 
his wife. The case got into print, and being 



134 The Church of St. Bunco. 

displayed under large heads in the Boston 
Traveler of December 12th, 1896 and there- 
after, a suit was instituted against Mr. Cham- 
berlain and that paper for Lbel.* 

It appears from the files of the Traveler that 
its industrious editor collected a large variety 
of statements, letters, and interviews, for the 
purpose of showing his readers, that, among 
Mrs. Woodbury's religious accomplishments — 
whether it were due to suggestion, elective 
affinity, hypnotism, or Christian ^Science — she 
possessed a mighty gift of drawing simple 
souls — the rich invariably preferred — into the 
select congregation of her fleecy followers. 
Then, at two hundred dollars a follower, she 
was depicted as converting the sinners of other 
sects to " Christian Science." 

It will be observed that Mrs. Woodbury 
seemingly dealt in " metaphysics " at cut 
prices, the " Mother's" regular rate for instruc- 

* The extraordinary matters of this chapter, however 
well or ill suppressed, were all published, with great de- 
tail, in the issues of the Traveler from Dec. 12th to 22d, 
1896, and from January nth to 25th, 1897. Here they 
have simply been put into brief form, and relieved of all 
unnecessary harshness. The papers have been preserved 
for evidence and are in my hands. — G. C. 



A Martyr to " Science." 135 

tion being three hundred dollars, not two 
hundred. But, for value received from Mrs. 
Woodbury's " loyal students " — she, like " the 
Mother," so naming her disciples — from seven 
to ten lessons only, according to the Traveler, 
were imparted to them. Then the course was 
indefinitely repeated, in accordance with the 
demand that could be created for the healing 
staples. 

Here, to be sure, was something that might 
have greatly offended " Mother Eddy." Yet 
daughter Woodbury's cut prices were only 
colorable, not actual ; for, in the frequent repe- 
tition of the same wisdom and religiosity to 
the same " loyal students," she must have done 
less work for more money than was ever done 
even in the Mother's college itself. 

Again, if we follow newspaper files and 
court records in the case of the Boston Trav- 
eler * we are told that Mrs. Woodbury had a 
family interest in putting on the market cer- 
tain stock in a hot-air engine — a kind of 
" Christian Science " stock in which, if her 
" loyal students " took a religious flyer, their 

* The story, with many details, in issue of Dec. 14, 
1896. 



136 The Church of St. Bunco. 

secular dealings would be sure to turn up with 
the right end in the air. This, perhaps, was 
a prime investment; but, on investigation, one 
" loyal student " — plaintiff Chamberlain of the 
suit we have touched — somehow received the 
impression, though doubtless through " mortal 
mind," that the holy engine stock had a slight 
smell of the Keeley motor. Unetherealized man 
that he was, this affliction of his base common 
sense was the immediate cause, he declared, of 
all his trouble. His pious wife was unable to 
bear such an affront to divinity in the person 
of her " teacher," St. Josephine Woodbury. 
So the " teacher " stuck to the wife, and the 
husband was left out in the cold.* 

That Boston newspaper, the Traveler, in 
spreading the Chamberlain unpleasantness, was 
assiduously biographical. Particulars can be 
curtailed. It is only necessary to say that the 
distinguished Mrs. Woodbury was depicted as 
a self-made woman who had once been known 
to plain environments, but who, with preach- 

* A long story underlies the unfortunate marriage and 
separation of the lady and gentleman involved in this 
case. But the facts are not essential to the one and only 
subject of these pages, " Christian Science." 



A Martyr to "Science." 137 

ing, healing, scientific religion and engine- 
stock, had become financially as well as spirit- 
ulaly beatified. Finally she had reached a 
shining abode on Commonwealth Avenue — 
that kind of mansion, in Boston, being the very 
next thing to " a mansion in the skies." 

Her " loyal students," it is true, were not 
represented by the Traveler as having been en- 
riched in the same way. Still, if already 
wealthy, as most of them were said to be, what 
was the use of it ? Might they not better come 
unto St. Josephine Woodbury, and cast upon 
her the dross and sorrow of their material ac- 
cumulations ? 

As described in the Traveler print, these 
" loyal students " were, for the most part, rather 
young people, rich in their own right, or so en- 
deared to their parents that neither gold nor 
silver, if it could be given, was denied to them. 
Once in the woods and groves of Teacher 
Woodbury's " Christian Science " paradise, 
these charmed innocents were turned into mis- 
sionaries to their families, where souls might 
be saved and further possessions might accrue 
to a blessed instructor. If the heads of these 
families would not turn from the wicked ways 



138 The Church of St. Bunco. 

of the world and their own churches, and bring 
gifts to the shrine of Christian Science, then 
the " loyal students " were taught to shake the 
dust from their feet, and depart from among 
the unholy. 

Thus were the Scriptures fulfilled " in 
Science." But the Traveler made it to appear 
that such doctrine set daughter against father, 
son against mother, and wife against husband. 

So, indeed, the doctrine was made to appear 
in a letter written by Saint Woodbury herself 
and published in the Traveler over her full 
name.* Therein was this preachment: 

" The Bible says that the teachings of Jesus 
rightly practised, will, must, set at variance the 
members of any household, some of whom do, 
and some of whom do not, imbibe the faith. 
. . . God's will be done. The command is 
still on the elect to come out from the world, 
and to separate and to shake the dust from 
their feet, of any house which will not receive 
the peace bestowed. ,, 

Mrs. Woodbury, having thus justified her 
religion and her economics by Scripture, pro- 

* Issue of Dec. 12, 1896. 



A Martyr to " Science." 139 

ceeded to justify Scripture itself by the Abso- 
lute — the example of Mrs. Eddy. St. Jose- 
phine went on, in her letter, thus : 

" When the Discerner of this Science first 
apprehended the demands of this Religion and 
system of ethics, she was forced to withdraw 
from the Congregational Church. ... I have 
been informed, also, that not one of her family 
ever held her faith in anything but active con- 
tempt." 

This latter revelation to St. Woodbury, re- 
garding Saint Mary Baker Eddy and her rela- 
tives, is probably true. Others have received 
the same information. But when the chosen 
one was rejected of the Baker family, particu- 
larly of its affluent members, it is affirmed that 
the spirit of " Science " arose within Mary, 
like a mighty tantrum, and, recalling her early 
likeness to Samuel and the Hebrews, she ex- 
claimed with "immortal mind," "I will yet 
roll in wealth ! " These words of the prophe- 
tess-Mother are sweet to the ear of Christian 
Science, which admonishes its adherents to go 
and do likewise — assuring them that if stead- 
fast " in Science," they will be sure to stand 
solid in Dunn and Bradstreet. 



140 The Church of St. Bunco. 

It is well that our condition of existence, 
whatever may be its metaphysical bases, is not 
all tragedy, but is relieved by a border of com- 
edy. According to a tale of Christian Science, 
as told by the Boston Traveler, Mrs. Wood- 
bury, when in the prime of her healing illumi- 
nation, with its full returns, felt on one occa- 
sion that piety would be advanced if a " loyal 
student " of hers — a lady of means — should 
add a promising husband to the true Church. 
It was done. Then, the ever-watchful 
" teacher " sent forth on the wedding tour a 
third " loyal student " — a virgin with her lamp 
trimmed and burning — to see that neither of 
the other twain should lapse from grace and 
the certainty of further contributions. 

The complaint against the Traveler news- 
paper got into court on the nth of January, 
1897. Short work was made of it. Not- 
withstanding all the divine science incarnate 
in St. Josephine C. Woodbury, His Honor the 
Judge, Dewey by name, excluded her from 
the court-room, that she might not contribute 
to the examination of her witnesses any eye- 
beams of hypnotism. 

As this book is not designed to be improp- 



A Martyr to " Science." 141 

erly personal, but simply an exposition of the 
claims, doctrines, and effects, of Christian 
Science, all unnecessary use of individual 
names must be avoided. But a few are indis- 
pensable; and people who are mentioned here 
have already got themselves corruscatingly 
into print. 

The first witness for Mrs. Woodbury — who 
turned out also to be the last — was a Mr. Al- 
fred M. Potter. He testified that he was a 
brother of Mrs. Fred D. Chamberlain — the 
lady said to be alienated from her husband — 
and that he and his sister boarded with the 
Woodburys. He was estranged from his fam- 
ily, he said, except that one sister, but Mrs. 
Woodbury was not the cause of it. 

As the Traveler summed up one point of 
the court-records, Mr. Potter, in the past year, 
had paid the husband of Mrs. Woodbury thir- 
teen thousand dollars outside of board and 
room. He had paid Mrs. Woodbury " between 
a thousand and eleven hundred dollars for in- 
structions for himself." But, in the summer 
of 1896, there was a European trip for Mr. 
Potter and the Woodburys. How could a 
" loyal student," young and wealthy, venture 



142 The Church of St. Bunco. 

abroad without his "teacher?" And why 
was not his money well expended for spiritual 
pleasures, on the way, if St. Josephine and Mr, 
Woodbury took good care of Mr. Potter, and 
brought him safe home? 

But the most extraordinary matter in con- 
nection with Mr. Potter's depositions was a 
certain quasi-confirmation of a story that came 
to the Traveler and had been published, alleg- 
ing that, on the authority of Mrs. Woodbury, 
the ancient and most infinitely closed of all mir- 
acles, " the immaculate conception," had been 
repeated under the advanced dispensation of 
Mother Eddy's religion. Such was declared 
by various " loyal students " of Mrs. Wood- 
bury to have been the claim of their exalted 
" teacher," to whom a son was born, named 
' Prince," an abbreviation of his full title, 
" the Prince of Peace." Mr. Potter came 
short of corroborating the whole of this mir- 
acle, but gave substantially the version of it 
which Mrs. Woodbury presented to the public, 
after the trial, in the pages of her " War in 
Heaven." There she says : 

" On the morning of June nth, 1890, there 
was born to me a baby boy; though, till his 



A Martyr to " Science." 143 

sharp birth-cry saluted my ears, I had not real- 
ized that prospective maternity was the inter- 
pretation of preceding months of physical dis- 
comfort. . . . An hour after the birth I rose. 
In the afternoon I was up and dressed, and at 
night dined with my family. . . . We named 
our boy Prince Woodbury, partly because he 
came into our family as a veritable harbinger 
of peace." 

Witness Potter testified that he understood, 
through Mrs. Woodbury, that " she had no 
knowledge of the birth of Prince " until she 
found him with her. This circumstance, he 
understood, " was through Christian Science." 

When Mr. Potter, with a straight, truthful, 
honest face, gave this testimony, it naturally af- 
fected the gravity of the bench, the bar, and 
all others present, except Christian Scientists. 
There was reflected from one to another the 
sardonic smile of " mortal mind." But the 
case went on until presently a paper was put 
before Mr. Potter, by counsel for the defense, 
that it might be identified. 

The paper never got before the court. But 
the contents of it were very peculiar. The 
paper, in fact, was a brutally blunt form of re- 



144 The Church of St. Bunco. 

traction on the part of Mr. Fred D. Chamber- 
lain, of every derogatory criticism of Mrs. 
Woodbury he had ever made, and a meek sub- 
mission to her brand of " Christian Science."* 
In the event of his not signing the paper, he 
was given to understand that he must depart 
from the abode of his wife. 

The document, it appears, was in the hand- 
writing of the " loyal student," Mrs. Cham- 
berlain, and was dictated by Mrs. Woodbury. 
But when it was presented to Mr. Chamberlain 
for his signature, he had not only declined to 
attach his name to it, but had retained the 
document. 

The Woodbury counsel quickly protested 
against the admission of such evidence, and the 
protest was judicious; for was not the whole 
case of " alienation " substantially set down on 
that paper? Hence, too, what would become 
of the libel-suit? But the court decided that 
the evidence was admissible. Then, in such a 
shocking plight, what could an able Woodbury 
lawyer do but decline, with virtuous indigna- 
tion, to go on further with the case? The 
short of it was that Judge Dewey discharged 
the defendants, reprimanded the prosecution, 



A Martyr to " Science." 145 

and the noisy Traveler had everything its own 
way.* 

As for the Chamberlain suit for damages 
" in Science," it was not pursued to the mone- 
tary end. It was soon ascertained that the 
wife really had more affection for her delec- 
table " teacher " than any " loyal student " 
could be expected to have for a mere husband. 
As a business necessity, a divorce was then 
procured by Mr. Chamberlain, on the ground 
of desertion, and the twain went separate ways. 

It was not proved in Mrs. Woodbury's libel 
suit against the Traveler that St. Josephine 
had claimed the full import of the Traveler's 
story about her " Prince." The proceedings, 
we have seen, were prematurely stopped. But, 
after the newspaper's legal victory, it published 
sworn statements from a number of people who 
would have been its witnesses had the trial 
gone on. The most important was one made 
by Hon. George E. Macomber, an ex-mayor 

* There were really two papers handed to Mr. Chamberlain, 
and he was to take his choice between them. The case, too, 
was withdrawn, not wholly on account of one thing, but many 
things which Mrs. Woodbury's lawyer found it impossible to 
contend against. But the most direct cause of the with- 
drawal is the one given. 
10 



146 The Church of St. Bunco. 

of Augusta, Maine.* In the regular form 
of a legal deposition he declared that he had 
known Mrs. Woodbury for several years, 
his acquaintance with her having come through 
his wife, who had taken lessons of her. He 
said : 

" My wife came one day and said Mrs. 
Woodbury had had a child down at Ocean 
Point which was a ' Second Christ/ was im- 
maculately conceived, and that it was the duty 
of her students to make presents to this ' Sec- 
ond Christ.' " 

Mr. Macomber declined to make presents, 
and, according to his statement, his wife's 
" eyes were opened," after a while, and she 
" pulled out " of " Science." 

The Traveler's other witnesses may pass. It 
is only essential to say that they were numer- 
ous, and that they all agreed with Mr. Macom- 
ber. One of them testified, in an interview, 
that he had once gone so far in neglect of his 
own family as to make a will in favor of " the 
Prince of Peace." But our direct point here is 
only this. — There would seem to be no doubt 
that St. Josephine Woodbury's " loyal stu- 
* Boston Traveler^ January 21, 1897. 



A Martyr to " Science." 147 

dents/' far and wide, were called upon to bear 
gifts to her celestial son. Hence, his origin 
had palpable use as a financial mystery, what- 
ever may have been its precise theological bear- 
ings. 

In " Christian Science/' the doctrine here 
recorded has been logically coupled with an- 
other doctrine — that of inconnubiality in wed- 
lock. This tenet, we can see, like the former, 
might result in money, goods and bequests, for 
some attractive " teacher," which might other- 
wise be squandered by a " student " in raising 
a family. 

But the principle here imbedded " in Sci- 
ence " has not been special to Mrs. Woodbury. 
Mother Eddy herself is the crystal background 
of all good things, and this one, with the rest, 
must be credited to the fountain of universal 
originality, Science and Health* The pure 
simplicity of any being who can seriously read 
that book to the end, inevitably fits him to 
maintain with Christian Scientists, that, if chil- 
dren be not given to parents under physical 

* Until it is learned that generation rests on no sexual 
basis, let marriage continue. Spirit will ultimately 
claim its own, and the voices of physical sense be for- 
ever hushed. — Science and Healthy page 274. 



148 The Church of St. Bunco. 

laws, the science of perfect purity will ulti- 
mately evolve " Children of the Soul." " My 
husband and I," recently exclaimed a vestal 
matron of Mrs. Eddy's following, " have long 
lived together as brother and sister: isn't it 
beautiful?' 1 " Perhaps it is," replied another 
matron, thus addressed, "but I am told it is 
generally impracticable, except in Boston." 

When last heard from, our contemporary 
" Prince of Peace " was a pretty school-boy of 
wit beyond his years. May the world smile 
kindly on " Prince Woodbury," who is in no- 
wise to blame for any new-fangled religion* 
but may heaven preserve him from any further 
involution with the sacraments of " Christian 
Science." 

Before bidding adieu to the heroine-martyr 
of our present chapter, one more instance must 
be given of her work in a careless world — a 
very sad instance, not to be treated lightly. 

Among Mrs. Josephine Woodbury's " loyal- 
students " for some time preceding the year 
1897, was a hand-maiden of " Christian Sci- 
ence," one Mary Nash. The story of poor lit- 
tle Mary was told in the Boston Traveler* 
* January 15, 1897. 



A Martyr to " Science." 149 

chiefly in the words of her father, when that 
paper was sued for libel " in Science." 

Mary Nash, as we summarize that story, 
lived at Augusta, Maine, and her father, like 
our witness Macomber, had been a. mayor of 
that city. He was a busy man, but one who 
loved his daughter, and kept her in funds for 
what he regarded as harmless fads and amuse- 
ments. 

Mary joined the " loyal students." Then, 
little by little, she absented herself from Au- 
gusta, making frequent pilgrimages to Boston. 
The pilgrimages grew in duration until her 
home was seldom her habitation. " Teacher " 
Woodbury had not only changed her heart, but 
her whole tenor of mortal life, and Mary was 
completely born again into the most progressed 
fears and phases of " Christian Science." 

Letters followed to her father, asking for 
money, and demanding that he and all his 
house should join " the loyal students." He 
forwarded the money as occasion required, but 
his unregenerate neck stiffly declined " Sci- 
ence." So Mary went no more to her father 
for weeks and months together. He sent her 
mother and brother to her, with prayers that 



150 The Church of St. Bunco. 

she return to the family hearth-stone, if not to 
the family church. But she was always se- 
questered from the influence of her relatives, 
by some ''' loyal student " or other in the 
Woodbury collection of dutiful freaks. 

Mary's soul was much disturbed at times, 
notwithstanding the religio-scientific consola- 
tions of her surrounding guardians. She be- 
gan to demonstrate, in her own scattered little 
person, the one everlasting assumption of 
" Christian Science," that the human body is 
an illusion to be dispelled. In other words, 
Mary Nash was fast sinking into what ordi- 
nary doctors of medicine and divinity term ill- 
ness, and it became extreme. 

Then, not for the first time, her father, went 
to Boston himself, to take, if possible, his 
daughter back to his care and her mother's 
heart, at the Augusta home. But still, still — 
unless by some accident of a moment — she was 
always under the eye and the power of a " met- 
aphysical " keeper. Then Mary said " no " — 
she " could not leave the fount of Christian 
Science." So she stayed in Boston; for she was 
of age, and could select her castle and com- 
panionship while she had the ways and means 
to maintain them. 



A Martyr to " Science." 151 

Now what could a poor law-abiding citizen 
of New England, who had once been a mayor, 
do in such a case ? Had Mary's father been a 
wild citizen of the West or the South, he might 
have taken his handy " gun " along with him, 
and removed his child or " cleaned out the 
ranch." But Maine and Massachusetts are too 
subdued for such stringent remedies. So 
Mayor Nash mourned of " hypnotism," and of- 
fered — the distracted father that he was — five 
hundred dollars, to release his daughter from 
the blessings of her religion. This mercenary 
offer was spurned, as suspect perchance in legal 
and ecclesiastic form; but the way was pointed 
out in which the money might be received for 
lessons in Christian Science, at the Woodbury 
cut-rates. 

Meanwhile, it being ascertained that Mary 
Nash had a modest bank-account in her name, 
the money was sent for, by herself nominally, 
but visibly through a person in the number 
seven shoes of a " loyal student." The bank 
men — who were not " in Science " — declined 
to pay Mary's demand, and referred the matter 
to her father. He agreed with the bank in 
holding the proceeds of his daughter's account, 



152 The Church of St. Bunco. 

and his very stomach, not to say his soul, re- 
jected the thought of exchanging cash for re- 
ligious instruction from Mrs. Josephine C. 
Woodbury. 

So little Mary Nash became of no further 
promise to " Christian Science." And there 
was no time to lose. Mary was plainly depart- 
ing from the state of deception — certainly such 
to her — called " earthly life." Hastily, at last, 
she was permitted to journey home with her 
father, and presently the sad man laid his 
daughter away in what to him was death.* 

From the history of " Christian Science" — 
set down in these pages as the thing really is — 

* I have seen what I suppose to be true copies of a 
series of letters written by Mary Nash and different 
members of her family, with one or two from some of 
Mrs. Woodbury's " loyal students." The letters might 
possibly be taken to show that inharmony existed in the 
Nash family, and that the daughter stayed away from 
father, mother and brothers on that account, instead of 
being, if such was the case, just where a sensible and af- 
fectionate daughter was most needed. The letters, at any 
rate, show the most united affection for her, and more 
than willingness to do anything she asked, if she would 
only return to her home. When finally she did so, two 
physicians, according to Mr. Nash, declared her to be 
under hypnotic control. Letters, under hypnotism, are 
suspect. — G. C. 



A Martyr to " Science." 153 

it must be clear to anybody not quite emptied 
of all " mortal sense "' that Mrs. Josephine C. 
Woodbury has been the most logical sequence, 
the most practical outcome, of the whole firm- 
amental illumination. 

But, that the Church of St. Bunco should 
grow and prosper — or should even hold its 
own among its honest innocents — it has been 
necessary for Mrs. Eddy not only to preach 
" love " and " purity " in general, but to draw 
the line of practical conduct somewhere short 
of blackmail, larceny and homicide. St. Jo- 
sephine Woodbury never committed a sin in 
her life. Sin has no reality '* in Science." 
Her " loyal students " would all have testified 
that she was equal to any of the angels, if not 
better than the highest. Yet a hard world 
around her, not understanding " true relig- 
ion," began to fancy, say in 1896, that she was 
not, every second, fulfilling all the ten com- 
mandments. Then, besides her War in 
Heaven, the lady has written another book, 
called Christian Voices, in which, the thought 
having been long imputed to her, she asked the 
question, " Who shall succeed Mrs. Eddy?" As 
Science and Health declares there is no death, 



154 The Church of St. Bunco. 

and as " Mother Eddy " is specially immortal, 
St. Josephine's carnal talk of the " Christian 
Science succession" was naturally regarded 
" in Science " as worse than blasphemy. Thus 
many things worked together against St. Jo- 
sephine Woodbury, until at last she sat on 
" Mother " Eddy's burning fagots and wore 
the crown of martyrdom. 

Thereat the world did not come to an end, 
but went right on with the production of 
quacks, dupes, and " loyal students." 



Metaphysics. 155 



CHAPTER XL 

METAPHYSICS.* 

" Mother Eddy " and her flock " in Sci- 
ence " derive a considerable part of their in- 
come from a glib use of the word " Meta- 
physics." But what the " Church Scientist " 
has omitted to learn about the real import of 
that word would make a volume even larger 
than Science and Health. 

As unreservedly admitted in our present es- 
say, there is no trouble about a spiritual deriva- 
tion of the universe. In the declaratory, 
religious form, the New Testament is a suffi- 
cient example of this doctrine. In the philo- 

* The chapters of our book from XI. to XVI. inclusive, 
were, in substance, written at the request of Dr. William 
T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, and 
published in his Journal of 'Speculative Philosophy for De- 
cember, 1893, under the caption of "The Secret of 
Kant." These chapters, while too abstruse for light 
readers, really explain what " Christian Science " igno- 
rantly chatters about as "Metaphysics." — O. C. 



156 The Church of St. Bunco. 

sophical form the names of Plato and Aristotle, 
both of whom resolved all things into the prin- 
ciple of " Mind," summarized the subject for 
the ancient world. T.he modern world has 
now given three hundred years to the same 
theme, and, however well or ill aware of the 
fact, has reached the same end, but wholly 
without the assistance of any pushing, dodging 
adventuress, with a little set of abstract ideas 
and much screaming of " Science." 

Leaving lighter themes for the moment, let 
us venture on a brief survey of this ground. 

There are just two possible ways of analyz- 
ing things. One way is to set the world with 
its particulars before the eye, look at it, and ac- 
cept what we see. Then we may go to work 
on phenomena, dissecting and generalizing. 
This is the way of physics — a road that never 
leads to m^a-physics. It is the common turn- 
pike of material sicence — of " positivism." 
In it travel all such men, say, as Dr. Ernst 
Hseckel : also all such men as the late Parson 
John Jasper, the colored preacher of Virginia, 
who, seeing the sun move round the earth, set- 
tled the fact in that way. 

The one other way of dissecting the uni- 



Metaphysics. 157 

verse is to examine the means through which 
things are presented to us, and thus to ascertain 
what effect the means may have in the produc- 
tion and nature of the things. This method 
of investigation has ultimated in what has been 
summed up as " Scientific Idealism." 

Scientific idealism is the knowledge which 
every one may get even from his first lessons 
in optics, that things of matter — the objects of 
our five senses — are constituted such through 
the structure and action of these senses them- 
selves. That is to say, material things — what- 
ever we see or feel, hear, taste or smell — while 
existent and real — while practically what every 
one takes them to be — are made so through 
relativity. Or, as Kant put it, every " phe- 
nomenon " — meaning every object or fact of 
sensation — is a " representation " ; that is, 
some lot of effects on our sensuous nature, 
bound together into a unity of them, the unity 
thus formed becoming an object of awareness, 
a " percept." 

Scientific idealism does not question the 
given duality of the cosmos, which appears to 
us as what we call " mind and matter." Here 
are we; out there, indubitably apart from us, 



158 The Church of St. Bunco. 

are other things, involving another source. 
But scientific idealism has found that this 
source is itself quite other than the things we 
connect with it, and can properly be described 
in this connection only as source of impact. 
It has nothing to do with matter, in the com- 
mon acceptation. It enters into matter, being 
the ultimate non-ego, the objective background, 
of every phenomenon. But, in all material 
things, this background is transformed by con- 
tact with subjective sense (in. us or other or- 
ganisms), and "matter" is really the fusion, 
the compound, the third term, of these two ele- 
mental principles. 

This momentous truth, though mystically 
reached in the old tenet of India that " matter 
is illusion," and though touched understand- 
ingly by Carneades in Greece, Was first clearly 
seen, in the manner of modern science, by 
the remarkably solid Englishman, Thomas 
Hobbes. 

" Qualities called sensible " [said Hobbes] 
" are, in the object that causefh them, but so 
many several motions of the matter by which it 
presseth our organs, diversely. . . . Because 
the image in vision, consisting of color and 



Metaphysics. 159 

shape, is the knowledge we have of the quali- 
ties of the object of that sense, it is no hard 
matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that 
the same color and shape are the very qualities 
themselves." 

But, concluded Hobbes: 

" The subject wherein color and image are 
inherent is not the object or thing seen. . . . 
There is nothing without us (really) which we 
call an image or color. . . . The said image or 
color is but an apparition unto us of the mo- 
tion, agitation, or alteration, which the object 
worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some inter- 
nal substance of the head. . . . As in vision, 
so also in conceptions that arise from the other 
senses, the subject of their inference is not the 
object, but the sentient." 

When John Locke began his great "Essay " 
on The Human Understanding, and posited 
mind in its first estate as a passive nonentity — 
a " blank tablet " — he had no vital conception 
of scientific idealism. But, in the patient 
thinking of twenty years, such a man could not 
fail to come upon the law, though he saw it 
only in part, and did not work it out. This 
work was carried a great way beyond him, by 



160 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the acute and learned Bishop Berkeley, who 
showed from practical science, especially 
through his investigation of " vision," that 
nothing in the universe has any actual being, 
apart from a universal element, that, wherever 
it may be posited, can alone be called Mind. 

Since Berkeley, no philosophical thinker, 
perhaps, of any significance, anywhere in trie- 
world, has questioned the " ideality " of " ma- 
terial things." Even Reid, as the philosopher 
of " common sense," declared that 

" No man can conceive any sensation to re- 
semble any known quality of bodies. Nor can 
any man show, by any good argument, that all 
our sensations might not have been as they are, 
though no body, nor quality of body, had ever 
existed." 

Hume's comprehension of Scientific idealism 
was complete to his day, and was completely 
stated. He said : 

" 'Tis not our body we perceive when we re- 
gard our limbs and members, but certain im- 
pressions which enter by the senses; so that 
the ascribing a real and corporeal existence to 
these impressions, or to their objects, is an act 
of the mind difficult to explain." 



Metaphysics. 161 

The idealism of recent " materialistic " phil- 
osophers, such as Herbert Spencer and the 
school of " Positivists," has been most care- 
fully expressed by John Stuart Mill, in his 
statement that " Matter is a Permanent Pos- 
sibility of Sensation." 

" If " [said Mr. Mill] " I am asked whether 
I believe in matter, I ask whether the ques- 
tioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, 
I believe in matter; and so do all Berkeleians. 
In any other sense than this I do not." 

For an easy, popular view of the principle of 
scientific idealism, perhaps nothing has been 
better said than by Thomas Carlyle, in his re- 
view of Novalis. 

" To a transcendentalist [says Carlyle] 
matter has an existence, but only as a phe~ 
nomenon. Were we not there, neither would 
it be there : it is a mere relation, or rather the 
result of a relation between our living souls 
and the great First Cause; and depends for its 
apparent qualities on our bodily and mental or- 
gans ; having itself no intrinsic qualities ; being; 
in the common sense of the word, nothing. 
The tree is green and hard, not of its own nat- 
ural virtue, but simply because my eye and my 
II 



1 62 The Church of Si Bunco. 

hand are fashioned so as to discern such and 
such appearances under such and such condi- 
tions. Nay, as an idealist might say, even on 
the most popular grounds, must it not be so? 
Bring a sentient being with eyes a little dif- 
ferent, ringers ten times harder than mine, and 
to him that thing which I call tree shall be yel- 
low and soft, as truly as to me it is green and 
hard. Form the nervous structure in all 
points the reverse of mine, and this same tree 
shall not be combustible and heat-producing-, 
but dissoluble and cold-producing; not high 
and convex, but deep and concave ; shall simply 
have all properties exactly the reverse of those 
attributed to it. There is no tree there; but 
only a manifestation of power from something 
which is not /. The same is true of material 
nature at large, of the whole visible universe, 
with all its movements, figures, accidents and 
qualities." 

Scientific idealism, as far as we have gone 
with it, has now become one of the " exact " 
sciences — as much so as physics. It has been 
simply the result of continuous and innumer- 
able experiments in natural philosophy, for 
three centuries. There is no need of going 



Metaphysics. 163 

into these physical particulars, after they have 
been put into the school-books of children and 
explained in popular lectures. One more quo- 
tation must suffice. Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his 
Biographical History of Philosophy, tells us 
that 

" The radical error of those who believe that 
we perceive things as they are, consists in mis- 
taking a metaphor for a fact, and believing that 
the mind is a mirror in which external objects 
are reflected. But, as Bacon finely says, ' The 
human understanding is like an unequal mirror 
to the rays of things, which, mixing its own na- 
ture with the nature of things, distorts and per- 
verts them! We attribute heat to fire, and 
color to the flower, heat and color being states 
of our consciousness, occasioned by the fire and 
the flower under certain conditions. Percep- 
tion is nothing more than a state of the percip- 
ient, a state of consciousness. ... Of every 
change in our sensation we are conscious, and 
in time we learn to give definite names and 
forms to the causes of these changes. But in 
the fact of consciousness there is nothing be- 
yond consciousness. In our perceptions we are 
conscious only of the changes which have taken 



164 The Church of St. Bunco. 

place within us. . . . All we can do is to iden- 
tify certain external appearances with certain 
internal changes. . . . We conclude, therefore, 
that the world per se in nowise resembles 
the world as it appears to us. Perception is an 
Effect; and its truth is not the truth of re- 
semblance, but of relation. . . . Light, color, 
sound, taste, are all states of Consciousness; 
what they are beyond consciousness . . . we 
cannot know, we cannot imagine, because we 
can only conceive them as we know them. 
Light, with its myriad forms and colors — • 
Sound, with its thousand-fold life — make Na- 
ture what Nature appears to us. But they do 
not exist, as such, apart from our conscious- 
ness ; they are investitures with which we clothe 
the world. Nature, in her insentient solitude is 
an eternal Darkness — an eternal Silence." 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 165 



CHAPTER XII. 

FURTHER ANALYSIS OF THE UNIVERSE. 

In a previous chapter, some special refer- 
ence has been made to a little German professor 
named Immanuel Kant. He was born at 
Konigsberg, in 1724. In 1781 he wrote a book 
which he called " The Critique of Pure Rea- 
son." This provokingly modest title, as al- 
ready said, covered, in reality, the analysis of 
mind and matter, time and space. It was the 
most far-reaching piece of purely intellectual 
work that had ever been given to the world. 
It has split the heads of hundreds of " philoso- 
phers." Certain thinkers have fancied they 
have thought beyond it, and have supposed it 
to be laid on the shelf of " deceased philoso- 
phy." Meanwhile, we are told, the universities 
" are returning to the study of Kant." Better 
still, some of them are even beginning to un- 
derstand him. Here we shall take him straight, 



166 The Church of St. Bunco. 

paying no attention to any of the side issues in 
which he was apt to cover himself up.* 

Kant, so learned that he was said to " know 
everything," was completely acquainted with 
the whole trend of British philosophy, from 
John Locke to David Hume. He was satu- 
rated, too, with the physical sciences. So his 
first real step in his Critique of Pure Reason 
was to found himself on the all-inclusive law of 
scientific idealism. Immanuel Kant did not fool 
with this law. He did not test it, prove it, and 
then let it slip out of a loose, greasy mind, as 
an airy nothing of no practical consequence. 
He grasped it, and held it, as the bed-rock of 
all thought and all things. It is a pity he 
omitted to say so at the very first touch of his 
work. But he said it clearly enough when he 
happened to get ready. Thus, for instance : \ 

" In order to prevent any misunderstanding, 

* As this book, including the present chapter, is for 
readers who may or may not understand German, our 
quotations from Kant are taken from his Critique as in 
the old familiar, accessible translation by J. M. D. 
Meiklejohn (Bohn's Philosophical Library — edition of 
i860. 

f Critique of Pure Reason ; General Remarks on 
Transcendental Esthetic, p. 35. 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 167 

it will be requisite, in the first place, to reca- 
pitulate, as clearly as possible, what our 
opinion is with respect to the fundamental na- 
ture of our sensuous cognition in general. We 
have intended, then, to say that all our intui- 
tion is nothing but the re-presentation of phe- 
nomena; that the things which we intuite are 
not in themselves the same as our re-presenta- 
tions of them in intuition, nor are their rela- 
tions so constituted as they appear to us; and 
that if we take away the subject, or even only 
the subjective constitution of our senses in gen- 
eral, then not only the nature and relations 
of objects in space and time, but even space and 
time themselves disappear. . . . What may be 
the nature of objects considered as things in 
themselves, and without reference to the re- 
ceptivity of our sensibility, is quite unknown to 
us. 

Again, in closing his dissection of space, 
Kant said: 

" Objects are quite unknown to us in them- 
selves, and what we call outward objects are 
nothing else but mere re-presentations of our 
sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real 
correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by 



1 68 The Church of St. Bunco. 

means of these representations, nor ever can 
be, but respecting which, in experience, no in- 
quiry is ever made." 

Once more : 

" The faculty of sensibility not only does not 
present us with any indistinct and confused 
cognition of objects as things in themselves, 
but, in fact, gives us no knowledge of these at 
all. On the contrary, as soon as we abstract in 
thought our own subjective nature, the object 
re-presented, with the properties ascribed to it 
by sensuous intuition, entirely disappears, be- 
cause it was only this subjective nature that de- 
termined the form of the object as a phenome- 
non." 

After awhile, under the maddening caption 
of " The Possibility of a Conjunction of the 
Manifold Representations given by Sense," * 
our German professor virtually crowded his 
whole work into this one paragraph: 

" The manifold content in our re-presenta- 
tions can be given in an intuition which is 
merely sensuous — in other words, is nothing 
but susceptibility; and the form of this intui- 
tion can exist a priori in our faculty of repre- 
* Critique ; Transcendental Logic, p. 80. 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 169 

sentation, without being anything else but the 
mode in which the subject is affected. But the 
conjunction (conjunctio) of a manifold in in- 
tuition never can be given by the senses ; it can- 
not therefore be contained in the pure form of 
sensuous intuition, for it is a spontaneous act 
of the faculty of re-presentation. And as we 
must, to distinguish it from sensibility, entitle 
this faculty understanding, so all conjunction, 
whether conscious or unconscious, be it of the 
manifold in intuition, sensuous or non-sensu- 
ous, or of several conceptions, is an act of the 
understanding. To this act we shall give the 
general appellation of synthesis, thereby to in- 
dicate, at the same time, that we cannot repre- 
sent anything as conjoined in the object with- 
out having previously conjoined it ourselves." 

As to comprehend this paragraph is to ana- 
lyze the universe, let us grapple with it. 

Impatient Dr. Sam. Johnson once kicked a 
stone to refute Berkeley. Let us take that 
stone, as a clump of matter, and treat it with 
the head instead of the foot. 

" The manifold content in our re-presenta- 
tions/' says Kant, " can be given in an intui- 
tion which is merely sensuous." This means 



1 70 The Church of St. Bunco. 

simply that the various properties of the " re- 
presentation " or " intuition " called a stone are 
" effects on the senses/' The color, the tex- 
ture, the weight, the size — every one of all such 
" material " attributes — exist, as they are, sole- 
ly by relation to me, or to some other being in 
whom is organized the element of " sense.'' 
Matter is made of impact — impact between its 
objective background ("the noumenon " or 
" noumena ") and some sort or degree of sub- 
jectivity. Without these two terms, their 
product of interaction, their third term, matter, 
is not. So " the manifold content " of a " re- 
presentation " — or, what is the same thing, the 
properties of a material object — are " nothing 
but susceptibility." 

By " the form of intuition," Kant meant, as 
he has repeatedly explained, the plural quality 
of space and time. Space is made of spaces; 
time of times; and the plural contents (always 
such) of matter can only exist under the plural 
contents of space and time — that is, in sections 
of space and sequences of time, these sections 
and sequences being the intrinsic character, the 
divisible quality, the essential " form " of space 
and time as total units or completed things. 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 171 

And the nature of space and time need not be 
anything? more objective than the nature of 
matter in general, but can be derived, too, from 
" the mode in which the subject is affected." 
'* But," says Kant, " all conjunction " is " an 
act of the understanding," and " can not be 
contained in the pure form of sensuous intui- 
tion " ; by which he means that time could never 
be a conjunct of times, space a conjunct of 
spaces, nor a stone the conjunct of its proper- 
ties — each a " synthesis " of a " manifold con- 
tent " — unless made so by the synthetical unity 
of a priori mind. 

Kant attributes " unconscious " action to the 
" understanding " — ther unconscious action of 
" conjunction " or " synthesis." His phrase 
has been a perpetual stumbling-block to his 
readers, but he meant exactly what he said. 
Unconscious mental synthesis is what he after- 
ward designated as " the synthesis of apprehen- 



sion!' 



" By the term synthesis of apprehension 
[said he], I understand the combination of the 
manifold in an empirical intuition, whereby 
perception, that is, empirical consciousness of 
the intuition (as phenomenon), is possible." 



172 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Kant talks of " making the empirical intui- 
tion of a house into a perception, by apprehen- 
sion of the manifold contained therein," and 
says that " the necessary unity of space and of 
my external sensuous intuition lies at the foun- 
dation of this act." The " manifold " con- 
tained in an " empirical intuition " — take the 
stone we have used for an example — is simply 
the diversity of " properties," constituting the 
object — the color, texture, size, weight, and the 
rest of them; and these properties are " effects 
of sense." Every one of them is a relation to 
subjectivity, a result of impact on subjectivity, 
and is in the object only as reflecting or re- 
presenting there the sensuous nature of a sub- 
ject. But these various " effects on various 
senses," these merely subjective separates — 
how do they get united into one thing? What 
constitutes the unity of sensuous manifolds? 
Every phenomenon being an essential plurality 
— a lot of "sense-effects " — what closes to- 
gether the various effects on various human 
senses, called the properties of a stone, into the 
one phenomenal object, the stone itself. To 
this end there must be some common subjective 
ground of those subjective things, " effects on 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 173 

sense." There must be some subjective unity 
in which those subjective pluralities all 
merge, for only as merged do they get to 
be an object. Now, a common subjective 
ground of various effects on various senses 
can only be a common awareness of them — a 
synthetical unity of apprehension, or just in- 
stinctive, automatic consciousness in the germ. 
This must be common to all the senses together, 
and to each sense separately. What, for ex- 
ample, is seeing, but the simple awareness of 
sight? What is touch, but the simple aware- 
ness of feeling? What is any " intuition," 
which means any taking-in of any phenomenon, 
but a common awareness, however rudimental 
or developed, of some conjoined diversity of 
effects on sense? 

It must be added here, as vital to the full 
comprehension of the genesis of matter, that 
not only every material object, like our ex- 
ample, the stone, is made of essential plurality 
of sense-effects, but that every separate 
property of an object is also made of like 
plurality. No object, and no property of an ob- 
ject, is, or can be, single, unal, or, in other 
words, anything, until constructed so, in sense, 



174 The Church of St. Bunco. 

by the " unconscious understanding " thereof — 
the synthetical unity of instinctive, automatic 
" apprehension." To realize this fact, it is only 
necessary to remember that every property of 
anything, say the hardness of a stone, is a com- 
pound relation between the impact of some ul- 
timate non-ego on the sense of touch, and the 
peculiar nature of the sense itself : so the prop- 
erty of hardness must contain essential diver- 
sity, something from each of two fundamental 
sources. As Aristotle, from his ontological in- 
vestigations, found that matter, if regarded as 
an absolute independence — an unrelated thing 
in itself — is no thing, but only chaotic inde- 
terminateness — formless " potentiality " — so 
Kant, from his psychological inquiry — his dis- 
section of phenomena as -existent through per- 
ception — found the same truth in deeper sig- 
nificance. The entire principle of unity, 
whether in a feeling, a thought, a material ob- 
ject, or the universe as a whole, can only exist 
through the principle of mind. 

Here is the very bottom of the discoveries of 
Kant, and the basis, also, of all things. 

Mind, then, in its lowest state, is what Kant, 
" to distinguish it from sensibility," entitled 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 175 

" unconscious understanding." There used to 
be an old saw in philosophy — still, indeed, at 
work — to the effect that " there is nothing in 
the mind that was not first in sense." Leibnitz, 
adding a piece to the saw, said : " Except mind 
itself." Leibnitz affirmed, that is, that sense 
always contains mind — that mind is in sense as 
a component of it, and that without mind there 
is no sense at all. What Leibnitz perceived 
and asserted, Kant proved by " observation 
and induction " — by analyzing phenomena un- 
der the law of scientific idealism. Mind in 
sense — the mind of sense — is just automatic 
animal awareness, just " simple apprehension," 
undeveloped, and in the lowest animal life not 
to be developed, into " apperception," the con- 
scious stage of understanding, capable of form- 
ing a concept. 

Well, in the genesis of a stone, or any other 
material object, certain effects on sense are 
merged in the unit they compose, by reception 
into the " synthetical unity of apprehension." 
The stone is created in this way. Its own ob- 
jective unity — its wholeness, or i( form " as a 
stone — is thus the derivation, the manufac- 
tured product, of subjectivity as a cosmic ele- 



176 The Church of St. Bunco. 

ment, an element " a priori " to the existence 
of any possible phenomenon. 

The stone, however, is unmistakably ob- 
jective — is just the palpable thing that every- 
body takes it to be, out there in space. This is 
a given fact of perception — something, as Kant 
said, " never questioned in experience." As 
such fact, how can it be accounted for, when we 
know, at the same time, that the stone is noth- 
ing but a plexus of subjective states? How 
does the bunch of internal impressions get ex- 
ternalized? What is the cause of this reflex, 
this " representation " ? It must be something 
inherent in the principle of apprehension itself, 
or the plexus of impressions would necessarily 
stay within us. Being wrought internally, it 
would remain internal. Hence, this " appre- 
hension " — this element of instinctive synthet- 
ical awareness — must be in its nature a double 
— an entity which reproduces, or throws out 
before itself, whatever lot of sense-effects it re- 
ceptively synthesizes, or binds together in a 
sheaf, known as some object. But all this, 
summed up, means only that mind, even in its 
lowest form of " unconscious understanding " 
— the simple automatic apprehension which 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 177 

shuts together certain effects on sense into a 
totality of them— must, as being apprehension, 
necessarily, though instinctively, apprehended 
its own product. Here is the full explanation 
of the amusing, iron-clad conception of 
Hobbes, that an " image," or a " color," is but 
an apparition unto us of " motion, agitation, 
or alteration " in some " internal substance of 
the head." 

The self-reflexiveness of " apprehension " is 
precisely the same thing, in germ, that the self- 
reflexiveness of " apperception " is, in full 
self -consciousness. 

The self-reflexiveness of apprehension, in the 
manufacture of -phenomena, was named by 
Kant " the transcendental synthesis of imag- 
ination " — the word " imagination " standing 
on its roots, and meaning the image-making 
faculty. Phenomena, as reflex-conjuncts of 
sense-effects, are " produced " — put out — by 
this second function of apprehension; so Kant 
said he sometimes called it " productive imag- 
ination." It is that function of pure elemental, 
or a priori awareness, which ">£-presents " it- 
self in the constitution of every object, as its 
unity, but a unity shaped according to some ob- 
12 



178 The Church of St. Bunco. 

ject's filling of senses-effects. Hence Kant 
says: 

■ This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous 
intuition, which is possible and necessary a 
priori, may be called figurative synthesis {syn- 
thesis speciosa)." 

Thus Kant found mind in, sense, " uncon- 
scious understanding," the instinctive aware- 
ness of animal susceptibility, as it existed in 
himself, to be the literal objective basis of all 
phenomena — the first " material " unity of 
every " material thing." And he found this 
elemental source of all unity to be an innate 
self-activity — a self-seeing mirror, as it were 
— a double of receptiveness and reflectiveness. 
Here, at last, was the actual, living thing, of 
which Locke's " blank-tablet " had long been 
the still-born, stone figure. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his remarkable in- 
vestigation of " The Principles of Psychology," 
posits " mind " as always implied in sentiency, 
and as necessary to the genesis of any phenom- 
enon, even the " first nervous shock " of a sen- 
sitive being. Recognizing the law of scientific 
idealism, he has seen, too, that our objective 
world is made up, at the perceptional outset, 



Further Analysis of the Universe. 179 

of such shocks. Again, he has proved, with 
great detail, that the action of mind is always 
of one general nature, whether in the lowest 
animal instinct or the highest conscious reason. 
But back at the first nervous shock, Mr. Spen- 
cer stops with mind, and says that at the next 
regress it becomes " unknowable. " Yet nearly 
a hundred years before this investigation Kant 
showed precisely what this so-called " unknow- 
able " is: He showed that mind, in all stages 
and states — mind in itself — is a synthetical 
unity of awareness. In germ, as " unconscious 
understanding " — as the mind of sense — its 
function is to be simply apprehensive of, and 
thus to conjoin in its instinctive cognizance, 
some " manifold " contained in a " nervous 
shock/' or in various sense-effects, into some 
unity; which then, as itself apprehended, or 
made a reflex, becomes an impression, an 
image, an object. 



180 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

A SPECIAL LOOK AT SPACE AND TIME. 

Through scientific idealism, fully exam- 
ined, Kant proved that matter is a manufact- 
ure of sense. We have not followed the order 
of his work, but have gone straight to the 
heart of it. His own beginning was the dis- 
section of space and time. Still, he implied 
therein, if only in one remark, all that has here 
been stated. 

" If I take [says Kant] from our repre- 
sentation of a body, all that the understanding 
thinks as belonging to it, as substance, force, 
divisibility, and also whatever belongs to sen- 
sation, asimpenetrability, hardness, color, there 
is still something left us from this empirical in- 
tuition, namely extension and shape. These be- 
long to pure intuition, which exists a priori in 
the mind, as a mere form of sensibility, and 
without any real object of the senses or any 
sensation." 



A Special Look at Space and Time. 181 

Students of Kant have known, in a gen- 
eral way, that he attributed " extension " to 
"bodies/' as derived by them from a priori 
mind. Space is so derived ; hence all things in 
space, which is the " form," the " condition " 
of their existence, must partake of its nature, 
which is pure extension, pure " given quanti- 
ty," as he designates it. But why does the 
shape of a material body belong to " pure in- 
tuition," and come from mind? Simply be- 
cause the shape (let it be of a stone) is merely 
the objected " synthesis of apprehension/' in 
which the properties of the stone, as impres- 
sions of sense, are unified, but in accordance 
with their special variety. The shape is their 
" figurative synthesis," their " synthesis spe- 
ciosa!' Now, in the meaning of Kant, and in 
the nature of the case, space is made in pre- 
cisely the same manner as a stone; only the 
stone is full of diverse properties — special ef- 
fects on sense, got from some impinging back- 
ground of matter — some " noumenon " — while 
space has no properties at all, except additions 
and divisions of itself — spaces. In other 
words, the stone is a special relation between 
mental synthesis and sensuous susceptibility, 



182 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the latter being in particular impact with some 
noumenal non-ego, and being definitely -filled 
from it. Space, on the other hand, is a gen- 
eral relation between the same mental synthesis 
and the same sensuous susceptibility, the latter 
holding no contents from any noumenon, yet 
being recipient to all possibility of noumenal 
impact. Hence, space is just " the synthesis of 
apprehension " itself, set in self-reflex, ob- 
jected, phenomenated. The stone, in its unity, 
its form, its " shape," is this objected synthesis 
of apprehension, ailed with certain sensuous 
effects. The synthesis of apprehension, again, 
as the condition of any special " shape " into 
which it may be stuffed, is of course a priori to 
the stuffed shape; so space is a priori to the 
stone in space. Once again, space is the out- 
ward representation, the very double to the 
eye, of the synthesis of apprehension ; for space 
is just the visible synthesis of the apprehended 
— the transparent base of co-existence for all 
external things. 

It must be remembered that the synthesis of 
apprehension, as the " mind " of " sense," is it- 
self a double, containing the pure conjunctive 
unity of " unconscious understanding " as an 



A Special Look at Space and Time. 183 

active factor, and susceptibility to impact as a 
passive factor. In the. conjoined relation of 
these two factors every material phenome- 
non gets to exist; so there must be some rela- 
tion of space to every external object, and to 
all external objects — which is to say at once 
that space is infinite, both in extent and divisi- 
bility, so far as it can apply to objects at all. 

And here, too, is* the reason that the con- 
tained character, the constituent quality, of 
space — meaning what Kant termed the " form 
of the intuition " — is essentially plural. This 
constituent quality of space is a representation 
of mind, as at once active and passive, receptive 
and reflexive — as fundamental a priori self- 
separateness. But space itself, as a whole, is 
the synthesis of this self-separateness. It is 
self-unity of self-separateness, materialized. 
Space, made of spaces, is a thing identical in 
form and contents. Kant said : 

" Space represented as an object (as geom- 
etry really requires it to be) contains more than 
the mere form of the intuition; namely, a com- 
bination of the manifold given according to 
the form of sensibility into a representation 
that can be intuited ; so the form of the intui- 



184 The Church of St. Bunco. 

tion gives us merely the manifold, but the for- 
mal intuition gives unity of re-presentation. 
In the ' ^Esthetic,' [the first division of The 
Critique of Pure Reason], I regarded this 
unity as belonging entirely to sensibility, for 
the purpose of indicating that it antecedes all 
conceptions, although it presupposes a synthe- 
sis which does not belong to sense, through 
which, however, all our conceptions of space 
and time are possible. . . . By means of this 
unity alone (the understanding determining 
the sensibility) space and time are given as in- 
tuitions." 

It is easy enough to follow out the genesis 
of time, in the same way as the genesis of 
space. The constituent quality of space and 
time is the same in both, and is subject in both 
to the same act of synthesis, in order that the 
essential plurality of " the form of intuition " 
may be created into the unity of " the formal 
intuition " itself — the single thing, space or 
time. But time is the " form " of " w-ternal 
sense," as Kant put it, while space is the 
" form " of "ex-ternsi sense " — sense being to 
Kant not its physical organs (which are mat- 
ter), but mental susceptibility as distinguished 



A Special Look at Space and Time. 185 

from mental synthesis. Every phenomenon in 
space is made of active subjective-synthesis, 
passive subjective-susceptibility, and noumenal 
impact. Space and time themselves are made 
of the synthesis and the susceptibility alone. 
But pure synthesis, which means just pure 
identity of awareness, can have no " suscepti- 
bility," cannot be occupied, without change of 
state; and any change of state in a pure general 
awareness forms succession of states, or, as 
Kant said, " generates time." But conjunction, 
again, of synthesis and susceptibility must be 
the relating of separates, with reference to the 
objective as well as the subjective factor. As 
objective effect this relation is pure co-exist- 
ence of separates in time, through outness from 
each other — space. All objects, impressions, 
" effects of sense," must take the order of 
time; but "objects of internal sense" (feel- 
ings, or emotions), having no direct filling 
from noumena, are not objects in space. Thus, 
while space is pure synthesis of apprehension 
£;r-ternally objected, time is the same pure syn- 
thesis of apprehension w-ternally objected. 



186 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CREATIVE MIND FURTHER PROBED. 

The inmost secret of the universe lies in 
Kant's four words, " the synthesis of appre- 
hension/' or what he more elaborately termed 
" the transcendental synthesis of the image- 
making faculty." 

" It is an operation [he says] of the un- 
derstanding on sensibility, and the -first appli- 
cation of the understanding to objects of pos- 
sible intuition, and at the same time the basis 
for the exercise of the other functions of that 
faculty. 3 ' 

It has been intently presented to view In 
these pages, because it focalises and explains 
the whole law of scientific idealism, and is the 
one most important as well as abstruse fact in 
the genesis of things. 

But having duly dealt with this point, it 
must now be said that " the synthesis of appre- 



Creative Mind Further Probed. 187 

hension," alone and un grown, is altogether in- 
adequate to give form to an object, in the full 
import of that word. For an object is some- 
thing held distinct by itself, in connection with 
another object, or with various objects. " Un- 
conscious understanding " cannot form such 
connection and distinction, but can only blindly 
maufacture single intuitions, affording at most 
what Kant termed " a rhapsody of percep- 
tions," in which no one would be first or last, or 
anything at all when past. A fish-worm, per- 
haps, has such a " rhapsody of perceptions " 
for its objective world. In the world of man 
the a priori element of intelligence which 
shapes it must be objected in the phase of con- 
sciousness proper, or " apperception," as well 
as " simple apprehension." 

In noting the difference between the syn- 
thesis of apprehension and the synthesis of ap- 
perception, Kant said: 

" It is one and the same spontaneity which, 
at one time under the name of imagination, at 
another under that of understanding, produces 
conjunction in the manifold of intuition." 

" Apperception " is simply apprehension 
apprehended, or mind adequate to self-concep- 



1 88 The Church of St. Bunco. 

tion and so to conceptions in general. That 
there can be a stone, as known to a human be- 
ing, there must be a synthesis of sense-effects 
(its properties), in which they are distin- 
guished among themselves, and of which ob- 
jects as wholes are distinguished from each 
other. A synthesis of this kind presupposes not 
merely " unconscious understanding," but un- 
derstanding that recognizes itself in connect- 
ing all things else. 

" I am conscious [said Kant] of my 
identical self in relation to all the variety of 
representations given to me in intuition, be- 
cause I call all of them my representations. 
. . . The thought, ' These representations, 
given in intuition, belong all of them to me/ 
is just the same as ' I unite them in one self- 
conscious.' . . . Synthetical unity of the 
manifold in intuition, as given a priori, is 
therefore the foundation of the identity of ap- 
perception itself, which antecedes a priori all 
determinate thought. But the conjunction of 
representations into a conception is not to be 
found in objects themselves. . . . but is 
on the contrary, an operation of the under- 
standing itself, which is nothing more than the 



Creative Mind Further Probed. 189 

faculty of conjoining a priori, and of bringing 
the variety of given representations under the 
unity of apperception. This principle is the 
highest in all human cognition." 

So, to the existence of any distinguishable 
object, there must pre-exist the element of 
mind in the phase of ^//-consciousness as well 
as jwfr-consciousness. Both must^enter the ob- 
ject. Hence, when Kant talked of " the ob- 
jective unity of self -consciousness " — another 
of his profoundest deductions — he meant lit- 
erally that " the synthetical unity of apper- 
ception," as well as " the synthetical unity of 
apprehension," is materialized in all conceiv- 
able things. To form the sense-effects of a 
stone into a single " intuition," they must be 
merged in a synthesis of apprehension; but to 
set the intuition as thus created — to make it re- 
main itself in the midst of others, it must be 
merged with them in a higher synthesis — a 
common connective consciousness, which, dis- 
tinguishing them in itself, re-presents them as 
distinguished. 

It was here that Kant reached his famous 
" Categories," which are merely reflexes of 
the pure synthetical unity of mind, as forming 



190 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the unity of all things and of all connection 
among them. 

The principle of mind, beginning, as we have 
seen, even with the instinctive mind of sense, 
is a spontaneous self-activity, receptive, re- 
flexive, and resumptive of its doubles. By be- 
ing the first, it unifies any and every manifold 
of sense-effects ; by being the second, it re-pre- 
sents the product — throws it out; by being the 
third, it apprehends the externalisation, and a 
percept is born. Apperception, or full con- 
sciousness, is the same self-activity, self-reflex, 
self-sight, transformed into " understanding." 
Thus, mind is essentially a triad as well as a 
unit. But, if so, it must reflect itself to concep- 
tion as a " Quantity " — a sum of its own 
phases ; and in these phases, it is a " Unity," 
a " Plurality," and a " Totality." 

Mind, again, as just a-priori principle and 
basis of all things, is manifestly their universal 
" Quality." But, as self-reflexive, self-re- 
sumptive, it is at once a "Reality" a " Nega- 
tion" and a "Limitation" which means it is 
that which, in its double, contraposes one state 
to another, while, as a whole, it is the limit of 
both states. 



Creative Mind Further Probed. 191 

It goes without saying that a principle of 
self-reflex is the " Relation " of its reflexes, 
and in this relation is a " Substance with De- 
pendence/' a " Cause with Effect," and a " Re- 
ciprocity " of its separates. 

This is a very short cut to the Kantian Cate- 
gories, but sufficient, perhaps, if we bear in 
mind that, while implicit in the mind of sense, 
they are reflexes of conscious, not " uncon- 
scious " understanding. The synthesis of 
mind through conceptions proceeds, not by the 
formation of sense-effects into units of intui- 
tion, but by the formation of these already- 
made units (objects or their properties) into 
species, genera, and ultimate universals — the 
pure unity of these groupings, without regard 
to the things grouped, being just the pure a 
priori unity of self-conscious awareness. Thus, 
those ultimate universals, the categories, are 
objective reproductions of pure conceptive syn- 
thesis, without which there could be no con- 
nection of things in thought — which would 
amount precisely to no realized objects and no 
objective experience. 

One of Kant's industrious reviewers, Sir 
[William Hamilton, fancied that Aristotle's 



192 The Church of St. Bunco. 

categories were " genera of real things/' while 
Kant's categories were " determinations of 
thought," and, as mere " entia rationis," must 
" be excluded from the Aristotelic list." But 
there are no " genera of real things " except 
as " determinations of thought " ; and, in mak- 
ing an experimental classification of objects, 
Aristotle found some of the Kantian categories, 
because the synthetical unity of mind had put 
those categories into the objects at the creation 
of them. To Kant an object meant something 
of which Sir William Hamilton had no boding. 



Genesis of " Transcendental Ideas." 193 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE GENESIS OF " TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS."" 



It must now be easy to see that mind, in its 
general form, is three-in-one — a triad. It is a 
self-reflexive, self-related unit, of three phases. 
The first phase is automatic " apprehension." 
The second is conscious " understanding." 
The third, which we touch here, is " reason." 
In reason, mind is stillthe general cosmic prin- 
ciple of awareness, with the function of syn- 
thesis, or conjunction. As intuition, it has 
perceived things. As conception, it has classi- 
fied them. As a last synthetical unity of 
awareness, it must include, or " comprehend " 
them — must relate them to its conjunctive unity 
in their full scope, which means simply in the 
ultimate reflexes, or forms, of its own nature 
and action. As process, this can only be'done 
by referring all things to pure synthesis, or 
connective identity, as final cause. 

Seeing things, and then thinking them, we 
always end by asking, " Why?, " They are, 
13 



194 The Church of St. Bunco. 

each and all so and so ; but what is the " rea- 
son " for it ? The pure form of answer, apart 
from all contents, is " because " — on account of 
cause. Thus reason forms its synthesis of 
comprehension by referring the particular to 
the general for a cause — a process that can 
never stop short of including all things in ul- 
timate unities of cause. It is evident that ulti- 
mate unities of cause must contain all sub- 
ordinate causes or conditions under them. 
There can be just three such •ultimate unities; 
for there are just three possible kinds of being 
and conditions that relate to their universals : 
subjective being and conditions to subjective 
unity of them; objective being and conditions 
to objective unity of them; and all being and 
conditions, both subjective and objective, to 
the universal unity of being and conditions. 
These final unities, again, as final — as totalities 
of conditions with none beyond — are them- 
selves " unconditioned." 

Reason, then, as an a-priori synthetical unity, 
necessarily refers all conditions of things to 
their final or absolute unities, which are in 
reality nothing but conceptional reflexes of 
Reason's own constructive synthetical identity. 



Genesis of " Transcendental Ideas." 195 

To be an identity of mind, for instance, to tfie 
conditions of subjectivity, reason must receive 
them into its unity, which thus becomes their 
totality . Now what is the objective re-presen- 
tation, the rational conception of the totality 
of subjective conditions? It is simply the 
" transcendental idea " of pure subjectiveness, 
or Soul. In the same way the totality of ob- 
jective phenomenal conditions, is the idea of 
the Universe; while the totality of all condi- 
tions, both subjective and objective, is the idea 
of that in which all mind and all matter are re- 
lated as their final cause or reason — God, 



196 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE GRAND RESULT OF DISSECTING PHE- 
NOMENA. 

Since the days of Immanuel Kant, no 
philosophy, no rational theology, no ultimate 
science, not referring to the results of his work, 
has had any real basis in thought — the reason 
being that he saw through, and explained, the 
principle of universal relativity, the law of 
scientific idealism, and relaid the whole struc- 
ture, from the corner-stone up. 

Before Kant it was known well enough that 
" matter," however we must all accept it with 
our hands and eyes, has no standing, under 
the analysis of thought, except as a system of 
effects on ourselves. Hume, we remember, 
saw all this so clearly that he pronounced the 
very organs of sense, " our limbs and mem- 
bers," to be " not our body," but " certain im- 
pressions " to which the mind ascribes " a cor- 
poreal existence." Our limbs and members 
certainly are our body — the only body we have 
— but Hume was right in his meaning that our 



Dissecting Phenomena. 197 

body is a phenomenon which has no existence 
but as a plexus of impressions on a principle of 
intelligence, possessing various modes of re- 
ception, named senses. But this principle of 
intelligence itself was, to Hume, not a fact to 
be grasped by " reason," not a principle to be 
known and described, but was to be taken as a 
" force and vivacity " unknowable beyond an 
instinct of it. Hume's unknowable " force and 
vivacity " — an improved form of Locke's 
" blank-tablet " — Kant analyzed in the light 
of its products; namely, those conjuncts of 
sense-effects called objects; those conjuncts of 
objects called species, genera, and categories; 
and finally those conjuncts of all things and all 
conditions of things, called transcendental 
ideas. Now, such conjuncts of various " mani- 
folds " actually exist. They are man's per- 
cepts and concepts ; they are his facts, his en- 
vironment. But as percepts and concepts, and 
always conjuncts of " the manifold," they are 
formed, organized, totalized, through a prin- 
ciple — the principle of perception and concep- 
tion itself. This is Kant's a-priori synthetical 
unit, common and necessary to all " things " 
and to all " experience." 



198 The Church of St. Bunco. 

The last word of any weight, against this 
reduction of matter to mind, was said a few 
years ago by that exceptionally acute thinker, 
Professor Huxley, in his summary of Hume. 
Too able and learned, both as philosopher and 
scientist, to question idealism, Huxley admitted 
it unqualifiedly. But, not having gone beyond 
the British proofs of it, he defended what is 
commonly called " materialism " in this way : 

" If we analyze the proposition that all men- 
tal phenomena are the effects or products of 
material phenomena, all that it means amounts 
to this : that whenever those states of conscions- 
ness which we call sensation, 1 " emotion, or 
thought, come into existence, complete investi- 
gation will show good reason for the belief that 
they are preceded by those other phenomena of 
consciousness to which we give the names of 
matter and motion. All material changes ap- 
pear, in the long run, to be modes of motion; 
but our knowledge of motion is nothing but 
that of a change in the place and order of our 
sensations ; just as our knowledge of matter is 
restricted to those feelings of which we as- 
sume it to be the cause." 

To this last posture of materialism, a compe- 



Dissecting Phenomena. 199 

tent understanding of Kant is the only reply 
that has ever been needed. It is simply of no 
consequence to the case what states of con- 
sciousness precede or follow other states 
of consciousness. Let it be granted (whether 
true or not) that " phenomena of consciousness 
to which we give the names of matter and mo- 
tion " precede all others. What of it? Kant 
has proved to us that no phenomenon of con- 
sciousness — no matter, no motion, no sensation 
— and, beyond all these, no time and no space, 
in which all the rest appear — has, or can have, 
any existence, except as put into unity, form, 
and order, by the unity, form, and order of 
mind. If both " the synthesis of apprehen- 
sion " and' " the synthesis of apperception " 
enter into any state of consciousness named 
matter, to give it birth, there is no possibility 
that the element of intelligence can be an 
after-birth of the process. 

All our objects, then, from a germ cell to the 
horizon, are constructed such through a men- 
tal principle innate in our own structure. But 
here it must be re-iterated and re-emphasized 
that whatever we, as units of mind, may em- 
body in objects as form, the filling of them 



200 The Church of St. Bunco. 

is not ours. It has a source apart. The rilling 
of our objects comes from " the ultimate non- 
ego," the " background of matter." This ulti- 
mate non-ego was a heritage to Kant from 
British idealism. He took it for granted at 
his first step and held by it unchanged when 
he was old and exhausted. He called it the 
" noumenon," the " real correlate of matter," 
and pluralized it as " things in themselves." 
But he insisted, as firmly as Herbert Spencer 
has since done, that the " noumenon " is " un- 
known and unknowable." 

In a certain way — vital enough, too — 
" things in themselves " are " unknown and un- 
knowable." Man is a small, dependent, limited 
being. Let us admit at once every old proverb 
in the world, to the effect that " the finite can- 
not comprehend the infinite." Sir William 
Hamilton issued a tedious list of such proverbs. 
Let us adopt the whole of it. " The finite can- 
not comprehend the infinite." The very mean- 
ing of " things in themselves " is that they are 
withheld from us in their specific contents. 
But in their general nature they are related and 
revealed to us ; and the revelation is always as- 
serted when we name them " source of im- 



Dissecting Phenomena. 201 

pact," the " real correlate of matter," " things 
in themselves," or even " the unknown and 
unknowable." Is there an " unknown and un- 
knowable ? " Yes, there is. But whatever is 
has being — must have being, or not be that 
which " is." So much then we know of " the 
unknown and unknowable"; it has being; it is 
a fact. But we know it negatively, as well as 
positively. We know what it is not, on pre- 
cisely the same ground that we know what it 
is. Being a " noumenon," it is not a phenome- 
non ; being a " thing in itself," it is not what 
things are to us. Being " the real correlate of 
matter," it is not matter, but is the objective 
background of matter. 

But now: Kant had analyzed matter and 
found it to be a relation — a relation between 
finite subjective awareness and this very nou- 
menal background now in evidence. He had 
found, too, that all matter — every spicule of 
it — is exhausted in the relation. He had found 
that, out of the relation, matter has no exist- 
ence. By these presents, then, we know that 
the objective background of matter, the ulti- 
mate non-ego, is not material. 

And, at this point, where are we, if we 



202 The Church of St. Bunco. 

pause and think? When reduced to elements, 
to principles, what is there of the universe — 
the all of things? Just the subjective and the 
objective, mind and matter. Hence, that 
which is not matter is mind. Nothing else is 
left for it. 

We may wriggle at this terminus as much as 
we like, but there is no dodging it. It may be 
said, for instance, that, while we know and ex- 
perience nothing but mind and matter (includ- 
ing with matter its phenomenal vistas, space 
and time), we can imagine something else than 
either; and, during the past fifty years, this 
nonsense has found lodgment in some heads. 
Now I can imagine anything, in the meaning 
that I can arbitrarily produce some foolish 
fancy. I can imagine a white blackbird, with 
his tail-feathers on his head. But I cannot im- 
agine even this self-evident contradiction as a 
thing of neither mind nor matter. What is an 
object of " imagination,/' in the meaning of 
fancy? It may be empty of matter, and so un- 
like the white blackbird. But no object of im- 
agination can be empty of mind. Imagination 
is itself an act of mind; hence every possible 
product of imagination must partake of mind. 



Dissecting Phenomena. 203 

If, therefore, I imagine something apart from 
mind and matter, it must still spring from 
mind, contain mind, and so not be apart from 
mind. The " reductio ad absurdum " can be 
had cheap and sure, just where it is most 
needed. 

After Immanuel Kant had once and for 
good dissected the universe, it seems a pity- 
that he declined to put his finding's together, 
and take the last logical step of his magnificent 
demonstrations. As a requisite, perhaps, to 
his microscopic analysis of human subjectivity, 
he declined to generalize his own discoveries. 
In short, Kant's synthesis was Hegel. But 
Hegel we need not follow, as our short cut to 
him, through the solution of" noumena, is 
worth more, as yet, than the whole German 
tour of " post-Kantean philosophy." 

Very early in his work Kant said: 

" There are two sources of human knowl- 
edge (which probably spring from a common, 
but to us unknown root), namely, sense and 
understanding. By the former, objects are 
given to us ; by the latter, thought." 

Dissecting, with Kant, the nature of " under- 
standing/' we have discovered in it the unal 



204 The Church of St. Bunco. 

form of all our re-presentations — of every 
perceptible and conceivable objected fact. Dis- 
secting " sense," with the same instructor, we 
have found it to be certain modes of mental 
susceptibility, its physical organs being noth- 
ing but relations between susceptible awareness 
and the nbumenal unknown, like all the rest of 
" matter." Led, once more, by our Professor 
straight up to this noumenal unknown, where 
he willed to stop and turn his back on it, we 
have only had to look, in order to see it collapse 
into the self-retention of Spirit — spirit out o£ 
us, but -still in itself, and thus going to make 
up the totality of Spiritual Being. We have 
thus found the " one common root " of all 
knowledge and all things. But we have 
touched, also, the apex of thought, and can ntow 
see what is meant — really and fully meant — 
by " absolute idealism." 

Absolute Idealism is not merely a phrase; it 
is a grand and glorious fact. Immersed in 
matter, stuck in our senses, we may insist on 
looking at sensuous phenomena as our friend 
John Jasper looked at the sun, with honest con- 
tempt for Copernicus and Newton. " De earf 
do not move roun' de sun/' exclaimed the 



Dissecting Phenomena. 205 

sturdy preacher, " but de bressed sun move 
roun' de earf. Dere she go now: don't I see 
her wi' dese very eyes ? ' ! Parson Jasper did 
see the sun moving round the earth, and in the 
same way we all see the objects of our senses 
existing in perfect independence of ourselves. 
Still, as surely as astronomy has proved the 
delusion of taking the sun's movement from 
the eye, philosophy, with the aid of " practical 
science," has proved the delusion of taking ob- 
jective re-presentations as not constructed 
through subjective being. The inevitable end 
of this proof is the dissolution of noumena as 
anything " material/' and the inclusion of all 
things in Universal Spirit. Of such spirit, 
finite subjectivity is a function — a necessary 
participative reflex, through which the Uni- 
versal Spirit is life, manifestation, self-evolu- 
tion. 



2o6 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SOME SEQUENCES OF ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 

Since Kant, we have said, "no philosophy, 
no rational theology, no ultimate science, not 
referring to the results of his work, has had 
any real basis in thought." It must be added 
that since the fulfilment of Kant's Critique, es- 
pecially by Hegel, there has not been one stone 
left as a foundation for "materialism." It 
goes right on, however, in multifarious forms, 
its defunct exponents still imagining they live. 
Surgical psychology, in special, is still as ac- 
tive with scalpel and miscroscope as if ours 
were the day of Coudillac and Erasmus Dar- 
win. The knife goes into the brain, and the 
eye peers after it, with the funny expectation 
of seeing, with Dr. Cabanis, some spicule or 
plexus of matter, there, " which secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile." The work 
is excellent as anatomy, and may have a plenty 
of important uses. But we, here, if we have 



Absolute Idealism. 207 

had the capacity and patience to grasp the find- 
ings of Immanuel Kant, know that mind can 
never be derived from any physical corre- 
spondence of its nature and action. We know 
that every possible attempt at such derivation 
is merely a side-show of Parson Jasper's great 
astronomical comedy, which Copernicus ex- 
ploded four hundred years ago. We know 
that every fiber, every solid or liquid, of the 
brain, with every movement of every atom it 
contains, is a ready-made physical object in a 
ready-made space and a ready-made time. But 
if we know Kant, we know, without a misgiv- 
ing, that space and time, with all things in 
them, are not only dependencies but are literal 
creations and manufactures of a universal prin- 
ciple named mind. We know it is this prin- 
ciple which furnishes the form, the unity, and 
so the very existence of every phenomenon. 
Hence we know, finally, that the first step in the 
understanding of matter is the analysis of 
mind, through which all matter is and is con- 
structed. Without this first step, all other 
steps are simply a stumble in the dark— the 
blind-man's buff of children. Or we may say, 
with a little more dignity, perhaps, that every 



208 The Church of St. Bunco. 

material law of the cosmos is subject to " The 
Law of Scientific Idealism." 

Now scientific idealism, pursued to the end, 
merges in absolute idealism. The source and 
substance of the universe is Intelligent Spirit; 
or, as the Bible and its Theologians say, this is 
the All-In-All. 

For fifty years — from the publication of 
Kant's Critique in 1781, along through Fichte, 
and Schelling, to the death of Hegel in 1831 — 
the vast illumination of thought that has been 
summed up as " German Transcendentalism " 
strove to unify natural theology and practical 
science in " Absolute Idealism." It will yet be 
seen that the work was done, however ill-com- 
prehended. The good old Kant still had his 
whole head with him when he said, in 1787, 
" the danger, in this case, is not that of being 
refuted, but of being misunderstood." The 
Comtes, the Hamiltons, the Mills and Spencers 
— with no end, too, of their German brothers — 
are illustrious examples in proof of Kant's re- 
mark, however greatly they may be respected 
within the limits of their own work. 

Once and for good, the history of philoso- 
phy, when understood, and the history of sci- 



Absolute Idealism. 209 

ence, when understood, have joined in the 
proof that the principle of all life — we may 
say God if we like — is Spirit Principle. 

Transcendentalism — a bulky word, but cov- 
ering much more than the letter of it — was 
naturally too high and too deep a result to get 
all at once into the average human head. For 
thirty-odd years after the close of its epoch in 
Germany — or until, in 1864, D r - James Hutch- 
ison Stirling produced his Secret of Hegel — 
not a man stood on the earth adequate to re- 
produce transcendentalism in basis and sys- 
tem. But the practical gist of it, without the 
full center or circumference, gradually became 
a part of the world's literature. In Britain, 
most notably through Thomas Carlyle, the new 
light penetrated biography, history, criticism, 
and even political disquisition. In America, 
focused in Ralph Waldo Emerson, the same 
light, whiter and purer if less flaming and 
burning, both vivified and purified all things on 
which it was shed. There the Infinite Over- 
soul and the finite undersoul seemed once again 
to meet in communion and evolution. Mean- 
while, Theodore Parker, with his vast scholar- 
ship and overpowering courage, preached Jesus 
14 



210 The Church of St. Bunco. 

of Nazareth, the Sermon on the Mount, and 
the Golden Rule, with little regard for any or- 
ganized theology of his day, whether its Uni- 
tarianism or its Calvinistic Orthodoxy. Back 
of all this, as now appears, there was a plain, 
uncultured, but inquiring and thoughtful man, 
in the byways of New England, who from 
the mechanism of clocks turned to the work- 
ings of the human mind, and in his own way 
reached the depth of knowledge and the 
mysteries of life. From a few practical ex- 
periments, he, too, analyzed the things of mat- 
ter, and found them to be re-presentations, 
externalizations, of elemental spirit. And 
then he drew the inference that spirit molds, 
directs, governs matter, and so that health of 
mind materializes health of body. 

But now, at once, the whole question at is- 
sue confronts us — what is the true and full 
position and power of mind in therapeutics? 
This question must be answered, here, not 
from the Quimby standpoint, and much less 
from that of the shallow muddle termed Chris- 
tian Science, but from the standpoint of actual, 
accredited, established metaphysics, now sub- 
stantially bearing th concensus of religion, 



Absolute Idealism. 211 

philosophy, and the practical investigation of 
material phenomena. 

By aid of Kant, with our short-cut to the 
logical and necessary end of his achievement, 
we have grasped the elemental source and 
solvent of man and his universe. It is Spirit 
in its evolution. But, in this evolution, man — 
or say rather and always the principle of sen- 
sation and consciousness in which man inheres 
— is merely the general form, diversely indi- 
vidualized, of the One All-inclusive Spirit in 
the activity of self-manifestation. The earth, 
the sun, moon, and stars, the human body, its 
house and the landscape, with every particle 
of all of them, are outwoven of universal Spirit 
through the loom of subjective being and unity. 
The forms of matter, with no exception, are 
fabricated in this way. Thus, not figuratively, 
but literally ard with exact knowledge, we may 
repeat after St. John : 

" In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
All things were made by him ; and 'without 
him was not anything made that was made." 

But the principle of animal apprehension 
and human apperception — or say just the con- 



212 The Church of St. Bunco. 

scious and the sub-conscious — is not the Ulti- 
mately Creative One, but is, in us, only a sub- 
creative power and agency. We simply indi- 
vidualize it in endless degrees and variations, 
all of us framing the same general world of 
objects, conceptions and feelings, but no one 
of us being, seeing, or feeling, in all respects, 
exactly like any other incarnation of our 
common identity. 

But while the form — the unity, and thus the 
individuality — of all things, is materialized 
from Spirit through sensation and conscious- 
ness in subjectivity — while this is the secret 
and genesis of all creation — we must ever hold 
fast to the equally basic and universal fact that 
the filling of the form — the infinite variety of 
impact on subjectivity which furnishes the di- 
versity of objects — all this comes from that 
ultimate spirit-background crudely called " the 
unknown and unknowable." 

Now this background of Absolute Spirit, 
the very withholding of which from finite 
creatures constitutes them such, institutes their 
law of progress, and gives movement of ex- 
pression to the Infinite Itself, can only be ab- 
sorbed and mastered by human beings through 



Absolute Idealism. 213 

study, work, and experience. While genuine 
metaphysics, then, assures us of our spirit- 
origin and relative oneness with God — of being 
God's children far more directly and intimately 
than most of us have ever imagined — it teaches 
us that for practical purposes, in our condi- 
tion of existence called " matter," it makes no 
difference what we call this condition. 'Tis 
something actual, something definite, some- 
thing fixed, just as long as we are in our 
earthly relation to it. From this point of view, 
Dr. Johnson's kicking of the stone to refute 
Berkeley was a deserved kick, and even By- 
ron's fun was justified in his tipsy lines, 

' ' When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 
And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said." 

All things are spirit surely enough; but the 
phenomena of matter, as transformed spirit, 
are related to each other under the laws of 
what we necessarily designate as material na- 
ture. Little by little, through long and hard 
exertion, we find out what these relations are, 
and how they are fitted to the human center 
of them. Some things are good to eat and to 
nourish us; others to poison and kill us. A 



214 The Church of St. Bunco. 

cold or fever may be a manifestation of spirit 
and an herb or drug may be another ; but if the 
herb or drug counteracts and destroys the cold 
or the fever, and experience proves it ten 
thousand times, who cares to analyze a dose of 
aconite or a cup of saffron-tea into a draft of 
" mortal " or " immortal " mind ? The process 
is a mere fooling with ideals — hysterics jump- 
ing at the moon. On metaphysical grounds 
— as far as anybody knows what metaphysics 
really means — there is no need that our physi- 
cians, if they are " good physicians," should 
trouble themselves much about a Mrs. Mary 
Baker G. Eddy. Esculapius came into the 
world long before her, and his followers will 
stay in it long after her materialized divinity 
has risen into a more spiritual and a more in- 
telligent state. 

The same may be said of our theologians. 
Their creeds have not come out of nothing, 
however much the spirit of them may have 
grown thick and muddy through crude under- 
standings. The Christian Church, surely, can 
yet offer to mankind something better than the 
Eddy " Church Scientist " ; and if it can, it is 
in no ultimate jeopardy from a few, or a few; 



Absolute Idealism. 215 

hundred, congregations of half-educated fad- 
dists. 

For a student of history — not in its mo- 
ments, but in its decades and centuries — it is 
easy to see that " Christian Science " has the 
reason of the fact and the spread of it, in its 
being a protest against the depressing mate- 
rialism around it — a materialism which, though 
rationally decapitated by Kant, has shown mar- 
velous activity, for a corpse, ever since the 
execution. 

The medical profession, too, has partly, if 
indirectly, been responsible for Mrs. Eddy's 
crazy horse of " metaphysics," running away in 
the dark, and butting its own brains out. From 
Dr. Mesmer to Dr. Charcot, it took about a 
hundred and twenty years for " animal mag- 
netism," under the softer names of " hypno- 
tism " and " suggestion," to achieve full and 
final standing in the French Academy of Med- 
icine; and the mental phenomena attending 
" mesmerism " have still but little " respecta- 
bility " among " regular physicians." But, 
that curative agencies are not confined to 
drugs has long been settled in the public mind 
— such part of the public mind, at least, as 



216 The Church of St. Bunco. 

permits itself any considerable reading and 
thinking. 

Has the pulpit itself — orthodox and not so 
orthodox — contributed to the success of Eddy 
" Science " ? We must say it has. The prac- 
tise, among the sects, of twisting the Bible out 
of its straight, historical, natural significance, 
and fitting its texts to every sort of whim, 
folly, and malefaction — this general practise 
has at last culminated in Mrs. Eddy's Key to 
the Scriptures, with pretty nearly the dissolu- 
tion of them in the abomination of interpre- 
tation. 

But " Christian Science " — the Eddy misfit 
for a specious name — has had its rise, and it 
has probably risen about as high as it can 
reach, notwithstanding its rapid extension for 
the moment. Only its protrusion from insig" 
nificance and non-attention was needed to un- 
cover its foundation on the sands of ignorance, 
its strength in the perennial weakness and cre- 
dulity of mankind, and its business success in 
ordinary, or more than ordinary, business cu- 
pidity. Has it done no good in the world, 
then? Ah, that is another question. What- 
ever may have been the chief motive of its 



Absolute Idealism. 217 

founder, and whatever may have been its 
" comedy of errors," it has forced the incep- 
tion of a movement that, as a whole, may have 
vast results for the human mind and the human 
body. Whatever material medicines may be 
necessary to mankind while they themselves 
are in a material condition, psychic forces in 
the cure of disease can no longer be ignored. 
What is the extent, and what the limit, of 
these forces, is a problem that must be exam- 
ined. As conditionally — here and now — man 
is both spiritual and corporeal — it would seem 
to be a self-evident conclusion that he must 
have both material and spiritual aids to health. 
That we can " jump " our condition, before we 
get out of it, is the most tremendous paradox 
ever presented 1 to the human mind; but the 
sequences — even physical — of systematically 
opening the finite soul to the Infinite Spirit 
may be incalculable. The revival, or definite 
rediscovery, in modern times, of healing the 
sick by the soul and the laying-on of hands, 
came to pass some fifty years ago, in the Uni- 
ted States, through the honest, single-minded, 
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. If the spirit of 
evil — of hypocrisy, selfishness and avarice — 



218 The Church of St. Bunco. 

has entered into the movement of mental heal- 
ing through another source, the frequent ne- 
cessity of very human means to divine ends is 
once more illustrated. 



Schools of the New Thought. 219 



CHAPTER XVIII. } 

VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF THE NEW THOUGHT. 

Just now, the general cause of metaphysi- 
cal therapeutics is separating rapidly into va- 
rious " schools," few of them having much 
consideration for the pretentious health-trust, 
" Christian Science." 

In the South, for instance — at Sea Breeze, 
Florida — a Mrs. Helen Wilmans has founded 
a settlement of houses and lands, souls and 
bodies, with books, pamphlets, and a weeklv 
press, all devoted, mentally, morally and phys- 
ically, to psychic dominion over all things. 
Freedom is the name of the organ that spe- 
cially spreads Mrs. Wilmans' light and cura- 
tives. She has capacity in a comparative de- 
gree, and energy, with self-confidence, in the 
superlative. She proclaims this : 

" Intellectual power in the individual comes 
from concentration of the mind upon an idea 
until the truth or falsity of the idea becomes 
apparent. Likewise the power of the race in 



220 The Church of St. Bunco. 

the unfoldment of a race problem must come 
from a concentrated effort to discover a hith- 
erto unfolded racial capacity; and this is the 
meaning of the movement I am inaugurating 
here." 

The Wilmans' conception of mind-healing 
has been illustrated as follows by a correspond- 
ent of Freedom, who discusses and admits the 
curing of disease among devout Catholics, ex- 
alted and prayerful, at the shrine of St. Anne 
in Illinois. It is all natural, he says : 

" If with equally strong belief they should 
pray to God, Buddha, St. Peter or Paul, Mrs. 
Eddy or Mrs. Wilmans, or a stump or stone — 
or should they stand on their heads, or drink 
water from a certain river, or anoint the sick 
parts with clay and spittle — the result would 
be the same. Their mind would cure their 
bodies. Mind is king." 

In some respects, the paper, Freedom, is 
almost as free from " material sense " as the 
book, Science and Health. Mrs. Wilmans has 
a correspondent who asserts, and probably be- 
lieves, that, by the concentrated power of her 
finite female mind, she has " never failed once 
in five years to avert the fury of severe summer 



Schools of the New Thought. 221 

storms." She has " demonstrated/' she says, 
the dominion of mind over material nature, 
" as clearly as any Mental Scientist has demon- 
strated it over disease." 

And here is an official announcement from 
Mrs. Wilmans' organ : 

" Freedom is the only paper published whose 
leading and constantly avowed object is to 
overcome death right here in this world and 
right now. If you want to learn something of 
the newly-discovered power vested in man 
which fits him for this stupendous conquest, 
read this paper, and keep on reading it." 

" The new thought " has traveled West as 
far as South. It recently had among its organs 
The Temple, of Denver, Colorado, " a monthly 
magazine devoted to the fuller unfoldment of 
the divinity of humanity," the editor of which 
was Mr. Paul Tyner, who afterwards con- 
ducted the Arena of Boston, consolidated with 
The Journal of Practical Metaphysics. The 
purpose of the latter periodical was " the uni- 
fication of scientific and spiritual thought and 
the new philosophy of health." The editor 
was Horatio W. Dresser, a Harvard graduate, 
an excellent philosopher of the ontological 



222 The Church of St. Bunco. 

trend, and a polished writer, reminding one 
partly of Spinoza and partly of Emerson. Mr. 
Dresser's books, The Power of Silence, The 
Perfect Whole, and others, have given him a 
wide reputation in his particular field of work, 
and have constituted him a center of the most 
logical and scholarly literature connected with 
" metaphysical healing/' This literature, too 
extensive for specialized designation, is under 
the propagandism of the Boston " Metaphysi- 
cal Club," an active and growing organiza- 
tion. 

The Boston " Metaphysical Club " comprises 
too much exact information and solid learning 
to accept or countenance the extreme vagaries 
of " Christian Science," and appears to be act- 
ing as a balance-wheel to the whole movement 
of " the new thought." In a recent leaflet 
the Club has taken special occasion to dissect 
and repudiate that most preposterous doctrine 
of Mrs. Eddy's " science," the absolute noth- 
ingness of matter. 

The title of the leaflet referred to is Chris- 
tian Science and the New Metaphysical Move- 
ment, with the added phrase, An Intelligent 
Discrimination Desirable. One excerpt is this : 



Schools of the New Thought. 223 

" Christian Science proclaims the unreality 
of matter, and of the body. The rational and 
broader thought, not only admits the validity 
of the body, as veritable expression, but claims 
that it is as good, in its own place and plane, 
as is the soul and spirit. While susceptible to 
mental molding, it is neither an error nor 
an illusion. Moreover, it is friendly to its 
welfare to affirm both its validity and 
goodness. It is to be ruled, beautified, and 
utilized in its own order, and not denied an 
existence. Even admitting that the- whole cos- 
mos is, in the last analysis, but one Universal 
Mind and its manifestation; even admitting 
that all matter is but a lower vibration of 
spirit, and that the human body is essentially 
a mental rather than a physical organism ; still, 
matter has its own relative reality and validity, 
and is not to be ignored as illusion." 

Of its kind, nothing better than this could 
be said even by a Hegel. It is exactly the cor- 
rect statement of the great metaphysical truth. 

The leaflet agrees with the criticism of this 
volume, that " the spirit of Christian Science 
is autocratic rather than democratic," and says : 

" Its polity and ritual, in every detail, are 



224 The Church of St. Bunco. 

shaped and directed arbitrarily by a single will. 
There is no room for investigation, liberty of 
thought, progress, or further revelation. There 
is no recognition of related physical science or 
evolutionary progress." 

The monograph continues thus : 

" The liberal movement stands for freedom 
of soul, and is in no way opposed to subordi- 
nate orders of truth. ... It does not ignore 
the good in existing systems, disparage reason- 
able hygiene, or deny the place of certain de- 
partments of surgery. It is not insensible to the 
present and provisional uses of simple external 
therapeutic agencies, at least until individual 
unfoldment and the recognition of higher law 
become more general. . . . While understand- 
ing, both from experience and observation, 
that a systematic employment of mental po- 
tency in a rational, scientific, and idealistic 
manner has a wonderful and unappreciated 
healing energy, its exponents do not think it 
necessary to form a new and exclusive religious 
sect." 

The main premise, of course, of all the 
schools of " mind-healing " is that " the mind 
can and should control the body." Let us go 



Schools of the New Thought. 225 

straight from this premise to the manner of 
applying it, as explained, for instance, in a lit- 
tle book entitled The New Philosophy of 
Health, excellently well written, by a Miss 
Harriet B. Bradbury. 

" The healer [says this author] simply 
holds in mind with great tenacity, for perhaps 
ten or fifteen minutes, an image of the patient 
as he should be. This image, by the process 
known as ' thought transference ' is impressed 
upon the sick man's mind as a possibility, when 
his own strong desire, seizing it, is able to re- 
produce it as an actuality. He may be quite 
unconscious that he has done anything for 
himself, and when he finds himself well, gives 
all the credit to the man who, as he thinks, has 
' healed ' him.- Yet the change is wrought 
by no man, but by the great life-giving force 
which two wills working in harmony have 
called into perfect action." 

In confirmation of " the law of mental caus- 
ation," Miss Bradbury says : 

" The most significant of recent biological 
experiments are those which have been con- 
ducted at the Smithsonian Institute with a 
view to discovering the physical effects of 
15 



226 The Church of St. Bunco. 

different mental states. They have proved 
that the different emotions produce immediate 
chemical changes within the physical organism, 
and it only remains to continue the investiga- 
tion to learn just how each habitual emotion 
is finally reflected upon the outward frame." 

So that " old mesmerist," Dr. Quimby — for 
this was exactly his view — has got along as 
far as the Smithsonian Institute at Washing- 
ton. And here let us introduce the names and 
cogitations of a few authorities so " eminently 
respectable " that the " very best and most 
conservative people " need not shrink from 
becoming acquainted with them. 

In a work on Practical Idealism, William 
DeWitt Hyde, President of Bowdoin College, 
tells us : 

" There are certain classes of disease for 
which hypnotic treatment is highly beneficial. 
Mental healing in all its various forms, in so 
far as it is valuable, rests on the principle that 
body and mind are very closely inter-related 
through the partly conscious but chiefly un- 
conscious control of the vital functions through 
the nervous system ; and that the state of the 
mind at any given time, and consequently the 



Schools of the New Thought. 227 

state of the body, in so far as we know it at 
that time, is made up of a relatively small pre- 
sentation of sensation, and a very large contri- 
bution of associations. Hence a very slight 
suggestion through the senses, by speech, or 
physical contact, or eradication of fixed images, 
anxieties, and fears, may introduce a new nu- 
cleus around which an entirely new set of as- 
sociations will cluster; so that through the re- 
newing of the mind the body may come to be 
transformed." 

Charles Van Norden, D.D., LL.D., at one. 
time President of Elmira College, tells us in 
his outline of psychology, The Psychic Factor, 
that 

" So tremendous is this power of mind over 
body, that disease may often be cured and ail- 
ments caused by a new idea." 

" A woman [says Rev. Dr. Van Orden] 
once came to Surgeon-General Hammond with 
what he considered an incurable disorder. She 
sighed as she turned to go away disconsolate, 
saying, ' Ah, if I but had some of the water of 
Lourdes ! ' — for she was a devout Catholic. 
Now it so happened that a friend had brought 
the doctor a bottle of the genuine water of 



228 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Lourdes to experiment with. He informed 
the patient of this, and promised her some 
provided she would first try a more potent 
remedy, Aqua Crotonis (New York City aque- 
duct water). The woman consented, but pro- 
testing that this latter could not reach the 
case. He then gave her a little vial of the real 
article, but labeled ' Aqua Crotonis/ When 
this had failed he gave her Croton water, but 
labeled ' Water of Lourdes.' The result was a 
complete cure." 

Prof. William James, of Harvard, in the 
chapter of his Principles of Psychology treat- 
ing " the production of movement/' quotes 
many authorities and gives various diagrams 
illustrating the effects of sensations and emo- 
tions upon the pulse, the respiration, the 
glands, muscles, and other organs and func- 
tions of men and animals. The celebrated 
Prof. Bain is quoted as saying that " accord- 
ing as an impression is accompanied with 
feeling, the aroused currents diffuse themselves 
over the brain, leading to a general agitation 
of the moving organs, as well as affecting the 
viscera." The conclusion of Prof. James is 
that 



Schools of the New Thought. 229 

" Using sweeping terms and ignoring ex- 
ceptions, we might say that every possible feel- 
ing produces a movement, and that every 
movement is a movement of the entire organ- 
ism, and of each and all its parts." 

" The effect," says Prof. James, " of fear, 
shame and anger, upon the blood-supply of the 
skin, especially the skin of the face, are too 
well known to need remark. Sensations of 
the higher senses produce, according to Couty 
and Charpentier, the most varied effects upon 
the pulse-rate and blood-pressure of dogs." 

Now if the higher emotions of dogs pro- 
duce marked effects upon their physical struc- 
ture, we must naturally infer that hope, faith, 
joy — all, indeed, of the loftier emotions of 
human beings — may set up high and healthful 
movements in the human body, while base emo- 
tions set up low, harmful, and diseased condi- 
tions. In this claim, anyhow, we have, ac- 
cording to " metaphysical healing," the cause 
and cure of disease, capped, too, with the ethics 
of " the new thought." 

Thomas Jay Hudson, in his book, The Law 
of Psychic Phenomena, gives this compend of 
the facts: 



230 The Church of St. Bunco. 

" The science of psycho-therapeutics is yet 
in its infancy. Thus far just enough has been 
learned to stimulate research. It has been 
demonstrated that there is a psychic power in- 
herent in man which can be employed for the 
amelioration of his own physical condition, as 
well as that of his fellows. When this is said, 
nearly all the ground covered by present 
knowledge has been embraced. It is true that 
many wonderful cures have been effected, many 
marvelous phenomena developed. Neverthe- 
less, all are groping in the dark, with only an 
occasional glimmering of distant light shed 
upon the subject; and this light serves princi- 
pally to show how little is now known, com- 
pared with what there is yet to learn." 

In discussing the conditions necessary to 
psychic healing, Mr. Hudson affirms that the 
exemplar and healer of Nazareth, the founder 
of our Christian religion, always recognized 
these conditions in the " miracles " imputed to 
him. We shall end our quotations, at this 
point, with one from Mr. Hudson's chapter on 
" The Physical Manifestations and Philosophy 

Of Christ." 

" I do not mean to say that Jesus could not 



Schools of the New Thought. 231 

heal in such cases where the mental environ- 
ment was unfavorable; but the fact that he 
took infinite pains, wherever practicable, to se- 
cure the best conditions, shows that he under- 
stood the law and worked within its limita- 
tions. Certain it is that he never performed 
any of his wonderful works outside the laws 
which he proclaimed, nor did he ever intimate 
that he could do so. It is true that his biog- 
raphers do not always relate the details of the 
transactions recorded; but it must be remem- 
bered that they wrote at a later day, and may 
not have been in possession of all the details. 
It is, however, a marvelous fact, and is one 
which constitutes indubitable evidence of the 
truth of his history, that in no instance do they 
relate a single act performed or word spoken 
by him, relating to the healing of the sick, 
which does not reveal his perfect knowledge 
of and compliance with the laws which pertain 
to mental therapeutics as they are revealed 
in modern times through experiment and the 
processes of inductive reasoning." 



232 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

AN ADVANCED HEALER OF TO-DAY. 

Recapitulating what we have been over, 
it appears that " metaphysical healing " is sim- 
ply the suggestion and determination of health 
— the ideal photograph, as it were, of health — 
transferred from the well to the ill, in the con- 
viction that Universal Spirit is the principle of 
all health, which we may receive from its 
Source by opening ourselves to it. That is to 
say, the health of the Infinite Spirit, so far as 
absorbed by a finite spirit, corrects finite errors 
of mind, and the mind, thus corrected, corrects, 
or cures, the body. Such, certainly, was the 
" truth-cure " of Phineas P. Quimby. With 
him, starting as a mesmerist, it was, really, a 
kind of normal and sacred hypnotism, by which 
he endeavored to put his patients under the 
close, immediate influence and operation of Su- 
preme Life, and Sympathy, and Vigor. 

Such treatment should do much for the ail- 
ing — how much we must wait to know. 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 233 

But the effects of it must have limits, and 
these limits must be the general, the fixed con- 
ditions, of what we designate as mind and 
matter. It may be well to re-state these con- 
ditions, but with focal reference to this 
point — the one vital point of our whole 
theme. 

Metaphysically speaking, we are spirit, and 
all else is spirit. But what is spirit? What 
are the constituents of it, to the extent that 
man may grasp them ? 

First, is the universal principle of intelligent 
conjunctive unity, instinctive and conscious, 
which, individualized in men and animals, 
manufactures, or sub-creates, all the unities of 
their environment, which they take to be " the 
forms of matter." 

Second, is the equally universal principle 
of subjective (negative) sensibility — the re- 
ceptiveness of spirit in its forms called " the 
senses." Transmuted through these senses, 
ultimate objective spirit — to us " the unknown 
and unknowable " — furnishes the filling, or 
contents, of what consciousness and sub-con- 
sciousness make up, or unify, into objects. 

Third, is the vast fact of Spirit-background 



234 The Church of St. Bunco. 

— Infinite Spirit " in itself " — which is re- 
vealed, and can only be revealed, to the Unite, 
as transformed through fixed modes of finite 
receptivity. 

A man, therefore, is simply an individuali- 
zation of the process by which the Absolute — 
That Which Is — expresses itself and lives. 
Whatever may be our environment under some 
changed state of our receptivity — sa)' " the fu- 
ture life " — our evironment of spirit objected 
through sense, in space and time, is the envi- 
ronment of matter; and the human body is a 
part of it. We are not only " in matter," 
therefore, but we sub-create the matter, through 
our God-given modes of sensuous receptivity, 
and can only escape from it through an entire 
change of those modes, called " senses." The 
door of escape is the door of death, and no 
human being has ever avoided it. Can any 
human being avoid it? We say no: because 
to be out of matter is to be out of the kind of 
receptiveness — our five senses — through which 
matter itself exists. If there be exceptional 
persons of clairvoyant susceptibility, who can 
pass sufficiently out of our average material 
condition to realize aught beyond them, the 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 235 

bodily state of these persons, too, must end, 
as we all end. 

Let us not mix conditions, like the meta- 
physical tyros of Christian Science; but while 
we are in the state of spirit known and expe- 
rienced as mind and matter, let us acknowl- 
edge the plain fact. As a corollary of this 
fact, if we are out of health, let us look to 
remedies good for both mind and matter — 
the body and the soul. Such will probably 
be the ultimate equipoise between " mental 
medicine " and material curatives. 

This, at any rate, is the best conclusion for 
'* the new thought " that the scribe at hand can 
reach. He may be wrong; for he is totally 
" uninspired," and has nothing to follow but 
his nose and his " mortal mind." But, the 
conclusion once reached, he stood on it as an 
a-priori breathing-spot. And then it occurred 
to him that, peradventure, some radical, in- 
dependent son of Galen might be conducting 
the business of therapeutics on a psycho-cor- 
poreal, double platform. If so, Boston would 
be the place to look for him, and the search 
was begun. In due time it was successful. 
The result may at least prove suggestive and 
entertaining. 



236 The Church of St. Bunco. 

Let our new friend be called Prof. P. ; for 
he has been an instructor in his kind of work, 
and he bears the title of " doctor " only by the 
courtesy of his patients, as Dr. Quimby did. 

Now it is certain that if Prof. P. does not 
cure all sorts of diseases, his patients think he 
does, vouch for it when questioned, and give 
most sincere testimonials to that effect. Even 
the cure of cancer is vigorously affirmed, and 
in connection with cases that have been given 
up by eminent physicians. But, as this book 
is doing no medical advertising, one ordinary 
instance of Prof. P.'s work must suffice. 

A large, strong woman, as the consequence 
of a fall, incurred violent sciatic rheumatism, 
and was treated at a hospital for three months, 
being worse at the end of that time than at 
first. On personally interviewing her — and she 
is a woman of more than average intelligence 
— she informed the writer that, in one treat- 
ment of twenty minutes, Prof. P. had " entirely 
cured " her, and that after five months — which 
had elapsed at the time of the conversation — 
there had been no recurrence of her trouble. 

Our search for light has led to a somewhat 
close acquaintance with Prof. P. and has in- 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 237 

duced him to explain his theory and practise 
of healing, for our use as a writer, excepting 
a few of his personal discoveries not immedi- 
ately important to the public, which he must 
withhold, he says, for something like the same 
reason that his learned brothers, the physicians, 
write their prescriptions in Latin. 

Prof. P. requires it to be said explicitly that 
he is a Spiritualist. He is so pronounced in 
the faith that he impatiently scoffs at all de- 
nial, evasion or concealment, of what he deems 
his " positive knowledge " that we exist after 
" our mere change of condition called death," 
and that " the spirits of our departed friends 
are interested in our earthly welfare/' He de- 
clares, however, that Dr. Quimby was sensible 
in not trusting spirit communications at the 
expense of his own judgment — " as, taking 
the long generations of mankind, there are 
necessarily more fools disembodied than in the 
flesh." 

According to our friend P., there are now 
four great remedial agencies possible to heal- 
ing the sick, apart from medicines in the usual 
sense. The intelligent and careful use of such 
medicines he believes in, and he seeks to co- 



238 The Church of St. Bunco. 

operate with all broad-minded physicians, 
rather than to antagonize them. The more 
occult, but often more effective agencies, than 
drugs or herbs, he says, are these: 

First: Animal Magnetism. 

Second: Natural Healing-Power — this 
power being inherent to some extent in all 
human beings, but greatly concentrated and 
developed in certain individuals. 

Third: Mental or Psychic Force — a force 
existing in both embodied and disembodied 
spirits, and as a universal principle. 

Fourth: "Sensitized" devices containing 
these powers and elements, with the function 
of imparting them to the ailing and the weary. 

" Magnetism," says our Professor, " as a 
material phenomenon, is a force so potent that 
it rearranges the unsystematized molecules of 
certain metals, and gives them harmonious 
direction and integral traction. The applica- 
tion of it — termed polarization — has been 
known even to produce ' clicks ' within me- 
tallic bodies, loud enough to be distinctly 
heard. Animal magnetism, pertaining to or- 
ganized beings, acts upon their corresponding 
but higher molecules in the same general way. 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 239 

The sick are disordered, locally clogged, ' out 
of tune/ They have lost, as it were, their 
polarity. Animal magnetism restores it to 
them. It then goes further and vitalizes them ; 
for, if imparted to the feeble by a person 
strong, well, and stored full of it, an equilib- 
rium takes place between an operator and his 
patient. Animal magnetism, however uncon- 
sciously utilized, doubtless takes part in all so- 
called * mind-cures ' that are physical afflic- 
tions, not the results of bugaboos and whim- 
sies. The absurd fulminations of Mrs. Eddy, 
at this late day, against animal magnetism, are 
only equaled by the comprehensive ignorance, 
in general, which Bishop Brooks is said to have 
considered the only possible excuse for the pro- 
duction of a book like Science and Health. 

" Inherent Healing Power is more occult 
than animal magnetism, but has become almost 
as well established. According to the accepted 
evidence of centuries, this power was fully ex- 
emplified in ancient times by the most faithful 
and unselfish of all the sons of God and man, 
Jesus, our Christ. According to recent and 
contemporary evidence, both widespread and 
exact, the Protestant world of late centuries 



240 The Church of St. Bunco. 

has had no example of the same quality so 
marked as that of Dr. P. P. Quimby. Inher- 
ent healing power goes with close and tender 
sympathy for the afflicted, and grows with use, 
like the brawn of a stevedore, or the intel- 
lectual dexterity of a practised writer. It may 
eventuate in a Quimby as naturally as the 
poetic faculty eventuates in a Kipling. 

" By mental or psychic force," says the 
Professor, " I mean the principle of apprehend- 
ing, understanding, and reasoning, with the 
moral elements pertaining to conscience and 
will. This combination of our essential being, 
in whatever phase of it we may exist, affects 
and modifies, if it does not altogether domi- 
nate, all the rest of our make-up. Its import- 
ance is very great, but may be exaggerated by 
forgetting that man is a microcosm, and that 
while he is in the externalized condition of 
spirit known as matter he is not at the same 
time out of it. For the finite to put itself in 
harmony with the Infinite, by right thinking, 
right feeling, right conduct, is indispensable 
to the highest health ; but an imaginary union 
with God through fictitious conceptions of our 
own ego is unnatural and unwholesome exal- 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 241 

tation, inducing disease of the mind, whatever 
it may do to the body. 

" Psychic power is an absolutely universal 
principle, common, in degree, to men, spirits, 
and God. It is sometimes employed by hypno- 
tists to such an extent that the physical sensa- 
tion of a subject is rendered void, even under 
amputation of a bodily member. It can de- 
stroy the taste for iritoxicants in a drunkard. 
It can supplant melancholia with hope and 
cheerfulness. What it can not do is yet a 
problem. 

" Of course such a power is a part, and 
great part, of sane therapeutics. In the appli- 
cation of it," said the Professor, With much 
warmth, " I affirm — let those who have not 
my knowledge and experience think what their 
ignorance or prejudice saddles upon them — 
that ' departed spirits,' as we call them, com- 
bine their efforts with those of men and 
women, to heal the sick. The power is thus 
redoubled. 

" We have taken but a few steps in this 

sort of knowledge, and it is accompanied by a 

plenty of deception and twaddle. But the 

truth underlying it has now procured a hear- 

IJ9 



242 The Church of St. Bunco. 

ing even before eminently timid ' societies of 
psychical research/ and will Boon conquer 
them, as mesmerism has done. Certain spirit- 
conditions are coming to be rationalized. In 
this country, for instance, the spirits of In- 
dians everywhere manifest themselves, espe- 
cially in connection with the cures of disease. 
The reason is simple. Indians were close to 
the earth, near to nature, in their lives, and 
they enjoy the scene of their old ' hunting 
grounds ' more than such etherealized spirits 
as were slightly attached to it. But spirit-aid 
in therapeutics is mostly co-operative. Essen- 
tial physicians, whether in our state of being 
or the higher state, feel an interest in their 
pursuit, and practise it. The most intelligent 
guide their assistants; but robust spirits of 
earthly qualities and attractions sometimes fur- 
nish a basic healing force that is almost physi- 
cal/' 

Prof. P.'s system of healing is remarkable 
enough in all ways; but his claims for his 
'* sensitized devices " would be too astounding 
for credence were it not that the things appear 
" to work," just as he says they will. Seem- 
ingly, they are nothing but small metallic 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 243 

plates; but they are charged, he affirms, with 
earth-magnetism as a " power-house," and 
then with animal magnetism, with natural hu- 
man healing quality, with attractiveness to 
spirit-co-operation in that quality, and finally 
with psychic power and control — that is, di- 
rection of mind and will. In other words, 
Prof. P. says that, after twenty years of study 
and experiment he can transmit to his " sensi- 
tized devices," and store in them, all the four 
great healing agencies which can be employed 
in therapeutics apart from ordinary medicines. 

By such means, he affirms, " not only heal- 
ing, but instantaneous healing," to the extent 
at least of immediate relief from pain, can 
always be effected in all cases adapted to his 
treatment. 

" Christian Science," he says — " mind-cure 
— faith-cure — oh yes, they l demonstrate ' over 
things, as the phrase goes. I admit it, at least 
in some instances. But, at their very best, they 
all take time. The patient must wait to exalt 
himself into some vision or condition he is 
told about, or to accept some theological doc- 
trine or other, whether true or false. Suppose 
a man is knotted up with rheumatism, has a 



244 The Church of St. Bunco. 

fit, or is insane. I don't wait for him to build 
up a belief, or to get into harmony with the 
Highest. I take him just as he is, clap my 
sensitizers on him, go to work myself, and, 
if he is not too far gone for aid on earth, I 
restore an equilibrium of body and brain. If 
I do this — if I instantly drive away the worst 
kind of pain — if I retrieve lost consciousness 
or a disordered mind — I can put faith enough 
into my patient for a beginning. Later, I will 
attend to his theology to the extent of my 
knowledge, if he desires my services as a 
priest." 

The operation of Prof. P.'s sensitized appli- 
ances, according to his claim for them, is cor- 
rection and vitalization of both mind and body, 
when disarranged or " ill," and then concen- 
tration of power in accordance with location of 
disease or pain. " As strange as it may seem," 
he says, " these little pieces of metal take upon 
themselves the physical and mental conditions 
of sickness, which can even be conveyed by 
them from one person to another, as I have 
proved by various experiments. But these 
conditions can be discharged from the plates, 
or 'grounded/ like electricity, and this, too, 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 245 

without destroying the higher, firmer, normal 
charge of health and strength. 

" Do you look incredulous ; do you smile 
with a tinge of pity?" asked Prof. P., as he 
talked. " Wait a minute. You have heard of 
Dr. Luys, one of the most distinguished phy- 
sicians in the world, Charcot's favorite assist- 
ant, and now the head of the- great Charity 
Hospital of Paris. Not long ago he had a 
patient—a young woman who had suffered 
nervous prostration, and was losing her mind 
from melancholia. She was affectionate, and 
greatly attached to her family. But she became 
aware that her love was strangely turning to 
aversion, which she could not control. Fright- 
ened and ashamed, she went to Dr. Luys. He 
tried everything he could think of to cure her, 
but unavailingly. At his wits' end — not know- 
ing what to do — he took up, one day, a large 
electro-magnet, and, as a pure experiment of 
impulse, fastened it to her head. He was sud- 
denly called away for three-quarters of an 
hour. Returning, he found his patient weak, 
but her head better and clearer than usual. 
Dismissing her, he put the magnet on his own 
head, took the chair she had sat in, and re- 



246 The Church of St. Bunco. 

mained there as long as she had done. He 
then went to dine with his wife and children, 
of whom he is very fond. But, greatly to his 
surprise, he found that, with no fault of their 
own, they were not agreeable to him. He had 
taken the conditions of his patient, 

" He was keen enough to recognize the fact, 
and announce it to his profession and the 
world. He drew the conclusion that the elec- 
tro-magnet can absorb morbid brain-influences. 
Also that it can transfer such influences from 
the sick to the well, though two healthy per- 
sons are not affected by it. He added that the 
transference of conditions from the healthy to 
the diseased almost ^always benefits them. 

" I am not hanging on ' high authorities/ " 
continued the Professor, "but they are some- 
times useful to me. There is Dr. Julius Alt- 
haus, of Berlin, a member, too, of the English 
Royal College of Physicians. As explained in 
a recent issue* of the Lancet, the chief English 
organ of the medical fraternity, Dr. Althaus 
is now rejuvenating old age, and prolonging 
our present term of life, by certain galvano- 
electric appliances — which, by the way, he does 
not tell quite all about. Henry Irving is un- 



An Advanced Healer of To-day. 247 

derstood to have been held back from the in- 
firmities of advancing years, and restored to 
the stage, by Dr. Althaus." 

Prof. P. claims to have been at work half a 
life-time in the general direction indicated by 
the experiments and achievements of Luys and 
Althaus, but to have been so busy that he has 
had no time to think about a degree of M.D. 
" The world," he says, " should be very grate- 
ful to these eminent gentlemen, and / certainly 
am grateful ; for though I anticipated the hap- 
penings of Dr. Luys by several years, and 
though almost any ' magnetic healer ' would 
assert the hypothesis, at least, of Dr. Althaus, 
my own theories and results are so far beyond 
my epoch that without the steps, however 
short, taken by such men as Luys and Althaus, 
I could get no sort of hearing. I am often 
laughed at, of course, as a ' crank ' ; but I gen- 
erally laugh last — for, as the phrase goes 
nowadays, I ' get there/ " 



248 The Church of St. Bunco. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CONCLUSION. 

The moral of our story is an old one, always 
new. " There are more things in heaven and 
earth than " — anybody short of Mary Baker 
G. Eddy can put into a " science." From this 
text it would be logical to educe a cyclopedia 
every month or so. But one little point will 
do here. 

The practise of medicine, notwithstanding 
its grand achievements, is still in its infancy. 
When I am ill, I call a doctor — the best in 
the vicinity. It is the custom; and, as Mon- 
taigne said, Que sais-jef I am not sure of 
much, and when I have "grippe" I am quite 
certain of less than ever. But the materials 
I have lately been at work on make me wish 
that " my doctor," instead of scorning all new 
things, would look into some of them, and add 
them to his acquirements. He will have no 
need to accept " Christian Science," which has 



Conclusion. 249 

been accurately described as " a way of getting 
cured of things by believing something that 
isn't true." I must excuse " my doctor " from 
accepted that inverted " science." But the 
general subject of occult and psychic healing 
is worthy of his attention. " My doctor " 
knows much: but, if he should enlarge his 
knowledge just a little, my faith in him would 
stand the increment. 

One thing I shall insist on. " My doctor " 
must not endeavor to supersede Torquemada, 
Henry the Eighth, and the learned ecclesiasti- 
cal doctors of the Inquisition. Hemustnotin- 
terfere with the right of private judgment in 
saving the body, as they did in saving the 
soul. In such a case I should count them his 
superiors, inasmuch as the soul is really worth 
more than its external machinery, which, in 
a few years, more or less, must wear out and 
go to the cemetery. 

The Inquisition honestly held a theory that 
the soul could only be saved by accepting a 
certain creed, and ought to be saved even at 
the cost of breaking the body on a wheel. The 
Inquisition would have been right, if its creed 
had really been the thing supposed. But four 



250 The Church of St. Bunco. 

centuries of Protestantism have established a 
different theory : it is that, whatever any creed 
may be or do, every man has the prerogative 
of deciding for himself the manner of thinking 
which shall raise him to heaven or lower him 
to sheol. Still, I repeat, the soul is worth more 
than the body, and if Protestantism applies to 
the greater, it should apply to the less. 

Some things have been settled, I suppose, 
by long experience, and have become matters 
of law for the protection of nations. Civiliza- 
tion requires that a man who knows nothing 
of physiology shall not practise surgery; that 
scarlet fever shall be quarantined; that school- 
children shall be saved from small-pox by vac- 
cination. Medical degrees certify that the 
holders have studied medicine long enough at 
least to know something about it in a way that 
the common judgment recognises. Nothing 
is to be said against such requirements impar- 
tially applied to a whole people. They simply 
must be enforced. Christian Science opposes 
them, dodges them when it can; for it hold's 
that human beings have no bodies except re- 
flections of a wretched lie called " mortal 
mind." In spite of its source, this dangerous 



Conclusion. 251 

form of insanity should be dealt with as gently 
as possible, but certainly should not go unre- 
strained.* Let it conform to laws, not special 
to any religion or to any humbug masquerad- 
ing as a religion, but general to the citizens 
who compose a free and sane community. 

* These words were written long before Dr. Alan Mc- 
Lane Hamilton testified, in the Surrogate's Court, New 
York City, Feb. 18th, 1901), that sincere Christian Scien- 
tists are afflicted with a form of insane delusion. 




Dec!$I90 : 



DEC 18 1901 



dec. 19 iyoi 



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